3^)0 NATIVE CC^XJNTRT OF THE POTATO. 



Thiijii ira- This 13, certainly, as 1 feave said, an ifljpottant pusgagc in 



jiortant fact. ^Yiq history of the 8o!a»um tuberosuni, and indeed in the 

 history of the diffusion of esculent vegetables over the 

 world. The potato has most confidently been supposed to 

 Br-iJerfint dates be a native of Virginia. Frono this portion of North Aine- 

 3>Mgned to the j,j^^ sir Joseph Banks imagines it was brouojit into Britain, 

 sRiportatioa of ^ i t i - » i 



<he potato. on or about the 27th of July, I58b. Another writer sup- 

 poses that it was brought from Virginia into Ireland in the 

 year 1623. 

 Kota native of Jt is now, I think, raost satisfactorily shown, that the po- 

 sfginia, ^^i^ jg jjqj, Qj^g Q^ ij^g indigenous plants of Virginia; and, of 



1 course, that it could not have been brought from that coun- 



b«t cmed try, as early as tl>e year 1586. It is shown, that, so far from 

 Eu ooe"^"'" being a native of Virginia, this country received its first po- 

 tatoes from Britain, into which they must have been intro- 

 tO years before duced from some other and more southern part of America, 



Eomesupijose ^,„^'„g gj^jp Elizabeth, in the year l6l3, about ten years be- 

 st to have been v ' •' ' •' 

 brought {» fore the period at which these roots are supposed by Mr, 

 Irekud from Willdenow to have been brought into Ireland from Ame-. 

 rica. 



We see too, that, after flourishing very well for a time, 

 the crops were, in a great measure, lost ; and that the stock 

 of a very important root was happily preserved by " two 

 cast-away roots," and became, in the course of a very few 

 ^' years, *' a niain^ releefe to all the inhabitants'* of a countryj 

 the openawk, toekawhoughe, and similar plants of which, are 

 of small value in comparison of the solanum tuberosum of 

 South America. 



fcrne, and then cover all with earth in the manner of a cole pit; over 

 it, on each side, they continue a great fire 24 houres before they dare 

 eat it. Raw it is no better then poyson, and being rosted, except it 

 be tender aad the heat abated, or sliced and dried in the sunne, 

 mixed with soireli and meale or such like, it will prickle and torment 

 the throat extrcameiy, and yet in summer they vse this ordinarily for 

 bread." Historic, &c. pages 26, 27- Thig is certainly not solanum 

 tubeiosutn. I take it to be a species of arum, and I think arum virgini- 

 CUTO. " They have another roote which they call wighsacany But 

 this Smith mentions as a medicine. He also mentions pocones and 

 musquaspen. The first of these is used both as a pigment and medi- 

 cine : the latter merely as a pigment. Not a word about any thijig like 

 3»liinum tuberocum. 



