304 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



plant. Also our maize and huge pumpkins and 

 water-melons, and all our vegetables and fruit. I 

 then took a table-knife and went to look for a 

 plant, and when I found one I dug down to a depth 

 of six inches, and there sure enough was the tuber, 

 attached to the root, but quite small — not bigger 

 than a hazel-nut — perfectly round with a pimply 

 skin, curiously light-coloured, almost pearly. A 

 pretty little thing to add to my collection of curios, 

 but all the same a potato. How strange ! 



From that time I began to take a new interest 

 in the potato, and would listen eagerly when the 

 subject of potatoes was discussed at table. When 

 the potatoes were taken up about the beginning of 

 December, and then the second crop in autumn — 

 April or May — my father would tell the gardener to 

 pick out a few of the biggest for him, and these, 

 when washed and weighed, would be placed as 

 ornaments on the dining-room mantelpiece, in a 

 row of half-a-dozen. They were not pretty to look 

 at, but they were astonishingly big when I put my 

 small marble of a wild potato by the side of them. 

 Then when some English neighbour, ten or twenty 

 miles away, would ride over to see us and stay to 

 lunch, my father would take up the potatoes one 

 by one and hand them to him and say : " What 

 do you think of this one ? And of this one ? " 

 Then : " And of this one ? " This one would be 

 the biggest. Then he would add : " What does 

 your biggest potato weigh ? " And when the other 

 replied : " Ten " — or perhaps twelve — " ounces," 



