122 Gleanings in Old Garden Literature. 



abouts, just when James I. was carrying out 

 the plantation of Ulster. 



Worlidge remarks that potatoes are much 

 used in Ireland and in America as bread, 

 and are of themselves also an usual food ; 

 which is to some extent an explanation of 

 the pa'ins which John Forster, of Hanlop, 

 took in 1664 to bring the potato into notice 

 and more general use as a vegetable. They 

 planted them in the same way as ourselves ; 

 and Worlidge acquaints us that in Wales they 

 were accustomed to cultivate both them and 

 the artichoke on the vacant spaces along the 

 highways, those green slips of ground about 

 which so much is being now said. 



But while we listen to what Worlidge has 

 to tell us about the conversion of the potato 

 to farinaceous objects, we must bear in mind 

 what Venner has set down about its ordinary 

 employment as a vegetable in 1620. The 

 reader of these pages will recollect the tradi- 

 tion that the first tubers from Virginia were 

 given by Sir Walter Raleigh to the grand- 

 father of Sir Robert Southwell. The root 

 had, perhaps, been known in Spain prior to 



