36 TRACTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, &c. 



SECTION VII. 



On Potatoes — two Crops in the Year — extensive Culture recommended — 

 solid Nourishment of, compared with Flour — Culture of Corn recom- 

 mended as a green or dry Fodder for Cattle— former heavy Losses in 

 Cattle ascribed to improvident management — Notices of dry Seasons, 

 and Losses in Cattle, from the year 1724 to 1792. — Seasons of Drought 

 produced by the Operation of some general Cause — severe Drought at 

 St. Helena in 1791-2 pervaded the Peninsula of India ; and felt at Mont^ 

 serrat in the West Indies, 



" Leek to tlie Welsh, to Dutchmen Butter's dear, 

 Of Irish swains Potatob is the cheer." Gay. 



iJocTOR Adam Smith, in his Wealth of Nations, observes, that, 

 " the chairmen, porters, and coal-heavers in London, and those 

 " unfortunate women who live by prostitution, the strongest 

 " men, and the most beautiful women perhaps in the British 

 " dominions, are said to be, the greater part of them, from the 

 " lowest rank of people in Ireland, who are generally fed with 

 *' Potatoes. No food can afford a more decisive proof of its nou- 

 " rishing quality, or of its being peculiarly suitable, to the health 

 " of the human constitution." 



If this able writer had visited St. Helena, or had been aware 

 of the practice of raising two crops a year from the same land, or 

 of producing 36,000 pounds o( Potatoes annually from an acre, 

 without manure, which Colonel Broughton has found to be the 

 average of his crops at Long Wood, which is by no means ihe 

 richest land here, it would have afforded him even a much greater 

 contrast, and a more forcible comparison than he has drawn 



