16 The Potato 



there is no account of its being found wild in other parts 

 of North America. 



From 1585 or 1586, potato tubers were brought from 

 what is now North Carolina to Ireland on the return of 

 the colonists sent out by Sir Walter Raleigh, and were 

 first cultivated on Sir Walter's estate near Cork. This 

 was some years later than their introduction into conti- 

 nental Europe. 



In 1629, Parkinson in his "Paradisus," in which he gives 

 an indifferent figure of the potato under the name of 

 Papas seu Battatas Virginianorum, adds details as to the 

 method of cooking the tubers which seems to indicate 

 that they were still luxuries. 



The cultivation of the potato in England made little 

 progress for many years. It is said that in the time of 

 James the First, they were so rare as to cost two shillings 

 a pound, and are mentioned in 1619 among the articles 

 provided for the royal household. In 1633, when their 

 valuable properties had become more generally known, 

 they were deemed worthy of notice by the Royal Society, 

 which took measures to encourage their cultivation and 

 for introduction into Ireland, especially as a safeguard 

 against famine, but their cultivation has become general 

 only within the last one hundred years. 



John Gerard received some tubers of the potato from 

 Virginia and planted them in his garden. He gave a 

 careful description of them in his "Herbal," the first 

 edition of which was published in London in 1597. In a 

 later edition (1636) he pictures them by means of a wood- 

 cut (see Fig. 6). He was so proud of these plants that 

 he was represented in his portrait at the beginning of 

 the work holding a flowering branch of the plant in his 

 hand. 



