552 Kitchen Garden Esculents of American Origin. [June, 
ing) besides that it is a food excellently delicious and strongly 
nourishing, fixes himself wherever planted, with such an irradi- 
cable fertility, that being set it eternally grows.”! We see here 
the distinction drawn clearly between the sweet potato described 
and the potato already under cultivation. 
The argument that if the introduction by Hawkins into Ireland 
had been the potato, it would have secured dissemination, loses 
its force when we consider the slowness of its progress in Eng- 
land. It was certainly grown by Gerarde in 1597. In 1663 Mr, 
Buckland, of Somersetshire, drew the attention of the Royal 
Society to its value, earnestly recommending the general cultiva- 
tion of the potato throughout the kingdom. In 1664 Forster 
recommends its cultivation in England. Ray, 1686, takes no 
further notice of the potato except by saying it is dressed in the 
same manner as Spanish batatas; Merritt, 1687, records that 
potatoes were then grown in many fields in Wales ; Worlidge, 
1687, describes potatoes as being very useful as “ forcing fruits,” 
and does not hear that field culture has yet been tried; Lisle, a 
little later, is wholly silent about the potato, as are also London 
and Wise, 1719; Mortimer, 1708, says the potato is not as good 
nor as wholesome as the Jerusalem artichoke, but that it may 
prove good for swine; Bradley, about 1 719, says they are of less 
note than horse-radish, radish scorzoners, beets and skirrets, but 
as they are not without their admirers, he will not pass them by 
in silence. Other authorities to the same purport are given in 
Martyns Miller’s Dictionary. 
Worlidge above quoted, and Clusius says that the plant had be- 
come so common in Italy that it was eaten like a turnip and - 
given to the pigs. Targioni does not, however, recognize this 
former wide cultivation in Italy, and says that it was only at the 
end of the sixteenth century or beginning of the seventeenth that 
the cultivation became known in Tuscany. In support of the 
ae theory that the potato was not as palatable in early times as now, 
-\ 2° SViteinia by E. W i i 
-— 10a. wont T Gent., Lond., 1650, 48. 
