THE POTATO AND ITS COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS. 333 



and vinegar have been obtained from them. Fresh varieties of potatoes are 

 sometimes raised from seed. 



Previous to the general use of the common potato, considerable quan- 

 tities of the batata, or sweet potato, were imported into England from Spain 

 and the Canary Islands ; and this is the potato alluded to by Shakspeare 

 and other contemporary writers. Its use is now entirely superseded here 

 by its more hardy and palatable rival. In tropical countries, however, it 

 is still esteemed a wholesome and pleasant vegetable. The roots, when 

 roasted or boiled, have a sweetish mucilaginous taste, more watery and 

 more insipid than the common potato, but wholesome and nourishing. 



In Gerarde's time (1597), Virginian potatoes, as they were then called, 

 were just beginning to be known. The sweet potato had been pre- 

 viously used as a kind of confection at the tables of the rich. Of these, 

 Gerarde says, " They are used to be eaten rosted in the ashes ; some, 

 when they be so rosted, infuse them, and sop them in wine ; and 

 others, to give them the greater grace in eating, do boile them with prunes 

 and so eat them ; and likewise others dress them (being first rosted) with 

 oile, vineger, and salt, every man according to his own taste and liking ; 

 notwithstanding, however they be dressed, they strengthen, nourish, and 

 comfort the bodie," &c. These were sold by women, who stood about the 

 Exchange with baskets. 



The same writer says of the common potato, which for a consider- 

 able time after its introduction was a rarity, that " it was likewise a 

 foode, as also a rneate for pleasure, equall in goodnesse and wholesomenesse 

 unto the same, being either rosted in the embers, or boiled and eaten with 

 oile and vineger, or dressed any other way, by the hand of some cunning in 

 cookerie." They were originally but the size of walnuts. 



The kissing comfits of Falstaff were principally made of sweet potatoes 

 and eringo roots. Potatoes were at first cultivated by very few, and 

 were looked upon as a great delicacy. In a MS. account of the 

 household expenses of Queen Anne, wife of James I., who died in 1618, 

 and which is supposed to have been written in 1613, the purchase of 

 a small quantity of potatoes is mentioned, at the price of 2s. a pound. Pre- 

 viously, however, to 1684, they were raised only in the gardens of the 

 nobility and gentry ; but in that year they were planted, for the first time, 

 in the open fields in Lancashire, a county in which they have long been 

 very extensively grown. 



Sweet potatoes are largely cultivated in some of the Southern States 

 of America, as well as in the Bermudas and West India Islands. The 

 principal American markets for them are the cities of New York, Phila- 

 delphia, Boston, Wilmington, Delaware, and Baltimore. There are several 

 varieties. The State of Georgia alone raises about 8,000,000 bushels yearly. 

 Sweet potatoes are not very popular in England ; indeed, the sweet taste 

 given by frost to our own potatoes is not generally relished. The flavour 

 of the sweet potato has been likened by some to beeswax and brown sugar 

 intimately mixed.* Sweet potatoes cannot be kept through the winter in 



