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 



