314 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



against water. Turnips and onions certainly have more taste, 

 but where one eats these vegetables five eat potatoes. It has 

 become an indispensable luxury to the rich, and an equally 

 indispensable necessity to the poor. How our fathers lived 

 without it seems to us a mystery. Ignorance of its virtues 

 must certainly have been bliss to them. We should be sorry 

 to go back to those good old times. Its introduction as an 

 article of food some three hundred years since was an era in 

 human happiness and progress. Valuable as is the potato as 

 an article of diet, its composition shows that it is intended as an 

 accompaniment of meat, and not as a substitute for it, and this 

 is the mode of using it adopted by all nations. The analysis of 

 it gives 75 per cent, water and 25 per cent, dry nutritive mat- 

 ter. These proportions, however, vary with the different stages 

 of ripeness and the different varieties. The more mature the 

 potato the less is the quantity of water, and some of the richer 

 varieties give as high as 32 per cent, of dry nutritive matter. 

 The latter consists of starch 62 per cent., sugar and gum 15, 

 protein compounds 9, fatty matter 1, cellular fibre 9, mineral 

 matter 4. The dried potato is less nutritive, weight for weight, 

 in the muscle-forming properties than any of the grains, except 

 rice, which it much resembles in composition, having, however, 

 one-half per cent, more gluten. It is remarkable that the Hin- 

 doo, who lives mainly on rice, and the Irishman, whose leading 

 article of diet is the potato, have a physiological likeness, being 

 distinguished by the size and prominence of their stomachs. 

 This peculiarity is accounted for by the necessity of their eat- 

 ing a large bulk of food in order to be able to extract from it 

 a sufficient amount of nourishment. 



We cannot account for the great and increasing popularity of 

 the potato, as an article of food among the civilized nations 

 of the earth, from its nutritive properties, though these are 

 not small. This universal popularity, which causes the potato 

 to be found on the tabic of the humblest cottager and of the 

 most aristocratic nobleman, must be attributed to its adapted- 

 ness to all tastes, all ages, all climates, and the various grades 

 of health. A native of the highlands of a tropical climate, it 

 grows everywhere, but loves best the cool climate of the hills, 

 and is found nowhere in greater perfection than in New Eng- 



