3 



above has now increased to 2,650 tubers and 169 large yams. The largest weighs 

 1 lb. I have boiled some for ten minutes, and eaten them ; and I have given 

 some to my neighbors, and they have eaten them, and nearly all of them thought 

 they were the best and richest potatoes they had ever eaten. 



The Crops of this Esculent having been so great, permanent, and reliable for 

 countless ages in the vast Chinese Empire, it is a fair and legitimate assumption 

 that its general introduction among the other great food-producing nations of the 

 world must, in time, by its immense product, create a complete revolution in the 

 price of food, and by a gradual diminution in price reduce the cost of living 

 everywhere, and more especially in all the northern climes of the earth, where 

 heretofore there has been a comparative scarcity of food, as this best of ali- 

 ments can be grown at a much cheaper rate than any other can be supplied, the 

 cost in (;hina being equivalent to l^c. per day to a man. It will also render all 

 deficiency of food an impossibility, which, taken in connection with the nutri- 

 tious constituents of tliis root, cannot lail to have an important bearing on the 

 health and vigor of the people at large. It will thus become the grand Con- 

 servator from famine, not only of our country, but of every other country that 

 shall adopt its culture, the same as it has for so long proven to China and 

 Ja])an,which vast nations its ample cro{)s have preserved unvaryingly against all 

 such calamities, whilst other countries have so frequently suffered from tlie direst 

 visitations of famine. 



In the East Indies, and the immense Asiatic dominions under British con- 

 trol, extensive famines often prevail, which carry off from half a million to a 

 full million of the inhabitants ; and even in the Northerri countries of Europe, 

 where civilization and its appliances exist, we hear of frequent famines, and 

 even Ireland, the land pre-emitient for its potato crop, has been many times most 

 severely afflicted by a severe dearth of food, which in some cases has approached 

 a famine. And even during the past year, such was its condition ; and a famine 

 existed also in Northern Germany, and in part of Kussia. 



But we have now presented for our acceptance, an Esculent, combining every 

 element of excellence, which is precisely adapteil to the most Xortliern regions 

 where man abides, and one which will there supply from their own soil and 

 labor, all the food adequate to the requirements of humanity. 



It is a highly interesting scientific fact, that the eniujma which had so long 

 puzzled the brains of our professed thinkers, and who could fix on naught but 

 JRice as the alimentary basis of this vast Nation which consumes no meat, when 

 reflection would teach us Rice was an impossibility on account of its required 

 irrigation has at last been solved, and that its Agricultural statistics prove to 

 us that the cultivation of this Yam, so nutritious and so universally productive, 

 is as general and the varieties as numerous as in the Potato culture with us, and 

 they thus reveal to us still further, the astounding fact that if the vast middle 

 and noi'thern regions of that mighty Empire, populated by more than 350 rail- 

 lions of happy and contented people, wore deprived of this one vertical root, 

 and received in lieu of it, every other known vegetable of the earth more than 

 one-half of that enormous population would perish from famine. It is not only 

 used by them in its natural state after being boiled or roasted, but it also sup- 

 plies universally the flour or meal for general use in the making of bread, pastry, 

 etc. In fact, it is this one esculent which has constituted the alimentary diet of 

 the Chinese and Japanese Empires for countless ages. As a most remarkable 

 fact in the history of the most populous Nation of our globe, and as an evidence 

 of intelligence most wisely applied where necessity most demanded, we quote 

 from their statistics this fact. It is there recorded that in certain Districts 

 where the dense population is greatly in excess of the area of so-il, they have 



