17 



had learned their value in the prisons of German}^, 

 where he frequently had no other food, who, encour- 

 aged by government, made a chemical examination of 

 the tuber, and showed that none of its component 

 parts were injurious. Not succeeding in overcoming 

 the prejudice in this way, he resorted to a sort of 

 finesse to accomplish his object. " To induce the com- 

 mon people to take a liking to potatoes," says Cuvier, 

 in his Eulogy, pronounced before the French Institute 

 in 1815, " he cultivated them in spots which were 

 much frequented, causing them to be guarded with 

 great care during the day only ; and was well pleased, 

 if he thus induced people to steal them by night. He 

 could have wished that the king might, as is related 

 of the emperors of China, have turned the first furrow 

 of his field. His majesty deigned, at least, to wear, in 

 full court, in the day of a solemn fete, a bouquet of 

 potato blossoms in his button hole." This, of course, 

 succeeded. The nobility from that time began to 

 plant potatoes. The philosopher, M. Parmentier, de- 

 clares that he himself once " gave a dinner consisting 

 only of potatoes, with twenty different sauces, and at 

 which the appetite did not repine." He labored forty 

 years, in every possible way, to overcome the prejudice 

 against their use. So bitter was the feeling awakened 

 against him on this account, that when, during a cer- 

 tain period of the Revolution, he was proposed for 

 some municipal office, one of the voters opposed the 

 choice with violence, assigning as a reason, — " He will 

 make us eat nothing but potatoes; it is he who 

 invented them." Before his death, however, he was 

 able to exclaim, " The potato has now none but 

 friends." Singular enough, it has been made a ques- 

 tion, in recent days, whether the introduction of the 

 potato into Europe has l^een, on the whole, a blessing 



