314 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
—that it looked like the remains of a boiled baby 
in the dish, boiled to a rag. For up to then I had 
seen potatoes on the table as they appear when 
boiled in their skins, peeled, and placed in a large 
shallow dish with a little butter on them; and in 
that way they have the appearance of large cream- 
coloured fruit, and send out an agreeable smell and 
have a nice flavour. 
Here was quite a different thing: this was the 
“homely potato” of the British journalist — 
homely indeed!—stripped of its romance, spoiled 
in the cooking, and made nasty to the eye. Yet 
this is how it is eaten in every house in England! 
In Ireland and Scotland I found that the potato 
was usually cooked in the proper way by people 
of the peasant class. But what do the doctors, 
who make our digestions their life study, say of this 
misuse of the potato? I don’t know. All I hear 
them say about the potato is that if your digestion 
is bad you must not eat it. What, then, will they 
say when I tell them that I have a weak digestion, 
and whenever I have a bad turn I cure myself by 
dining for a day or two on nothing but potatoes? 
Cooked in their skins, I scarcely need add, and 
eaten with pepper and salt and butter. No soup 
or fish or meats or sweets—nothing but potatoes 
for a day or two and I’m well again. Perhaps they 
will say that I am not a normal subject. But we 
needn’t bother about the doctors. Just - now, 
while writing this chapter, I asked my landlady’s 
daughter in the village in Cornwall where I am 
