AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 363 



The Rev. C. E. Goodrich of Utica, who is a grower of fancy 

 potatoes for sale, published last year a statement that a missionary 

 printer did not in the year '42 find this root at Canton, and that 

 it consequently did not exist at all in that country^ thence dedu- 

 cing that the present statements of its existence there are a hoax. 

 Any individual conversant with geography must be aware that 

 the Chinese Empire extends from the tropical till it approaches 

 the frigid zone, and will thereby understand that a person might 

 with quite as much reason seek for New England potatoes in the 

 West India Islands, as to seek for this northern root at the port 

 of Canton. 



On page 241 of the Journal of the U. S. Agricultural Society 

 for 1856, will be found a report made by its committee at the 

 Philadelphia Fair highly favorable to this esculent, and declaring 

 it fxdly equal in quality to our best potatoes. 



I will now cursorily enumerate some points of importance, and 

 correct some errors which exist with regard to this plant. The 

 five Chinese agricultural works translated into the French lan- 

 guage which I have consulted, devote a large space to the details 

 of its extensive culture, and state that more than fifty varieties 

 are there cultivated, as distinct in color and character as are the 

 varieties of our ordinary potato. In addition to its immense 

 product and great excellence as food, raw, boiled, or roasted; 

 they extol its medicinal properties, and believe it to be remedial 

 in all diseases of the chest. Five varieties have been imported 

 into France, and described in the annals of the Imperial and 

 Central Horticultural Society of that country. The variety 

 which in China obtains precedence over all others, is called by the 

 Chinese equivalent of " blanc de ris," or rice white. 



The French Institute, through Prof. Decaisneand others, assert 

 that they have found at length " a more than equal substitute for 

 both the common and sweet potatoes, a substitute that has under 

 their cultivation produced 800 bushels to the acre." In one of 

 their quarterly publications they have devoted 20 pages to this 

 one subject, and to recounting the successful experiments in 

 France, and they state, as the result of such investigation, that 

 " this esculent has now been tested in every department of France, 

 even to the shores of the Rhine, and is to be hereafter deemed 

 incorporated into the agriculture of France." To no other sub- 

 ject in this volume have more than two pages been devoted by 

 the French Institute. In the same quarterly, tlie " Revue Hor- 

 ticole," we find the following remarks by Prof. Decaisne : " In- 

 dependently '' he says " of the fecula which is so abundant in 



