30 GARDENS PAST AND PRESENT 



a happy inspiration some Lancashire lad or lass 

 thrust a potato into the glowing embers. Like 

 Charles Lamb's roast pig, from that time forth 

 baked potato became a delectable article of food. 

 It early made some way into the goodwill of the 

 Irish, but it took the famine year of 1742 to over- 

 come the prejudices of the Scotch farmers. Neces- 

 sity compelled a trial, and in the following season 

 the field plantations succeeded so well that the 

 future of the potato in Scotland was assured, and 

 by the end of the century the value of the crop 

 was universally acknowledged. The episode sug- 

 gests a curious little comment on the strength of 

 prejudice. 



Towards the end of the seventeenth century a 

 larger influx still of foreign refugees for religion's 

 sake streamed into England from the opposite shore 

 of the Channel. Forty thousand Huguenots, slip- 

 ping away by stealth and connivance from the 

 terrors that too surely awaited them in the land 

 of their birth, took sanctuary on free English soil, 

 and were everywhere received with the open arms 

 of sympathy. They brought with them simple 

 God-fearing manners of life, and hands capable of 

 various industries, but chiefly silk-weaving. They 

 brought with them as well an intense love of horti- 

 culture ; and it proved for them, as it has done 

 for thousands of others before and since, a con- 

 solation and anodyne to the bitterness of affliction 

 and exile. In innocent rivalry with each other and 

 in pure love of flowers, they tended their pot plants 

 and set up horticultural clubs and meetings where 

 interesting points of practice could be discussed, 



