CHTKESE NOKTHEKN YAM. 



DIOSCOREA BATATAS, 



AND ITS FIFTY VARIETIES, OF EVERY FORM AND OF VARIOUS COLORS. 



History of its Character and Constituents, as the Cheapest and Most 

 Nutritious of all Food, and as a Sovereign Preventive 

 of Want and Famine. 



By WM. R. PRINCE, M.D, LL.D., 

 Linnjean Nurseries, Flushing, New- York, March 1, 1869. 



WiT" All letters must be addressed to me, and they must enclose return 

 stamps or will not be noticed. 



THE NORTHERN YAM. 



This remarkable plant is a native of Northern China and Tartar? , and the 

 northern limits of the Temperate Zone. Having been the first to introduce 

 this most important of all Esculents to our country, and to urge its adoption 

 by my countrymen, more especially of the Northern, Eastern and Western 

 States, I have declared in my previous publications, that when I shall have 

 passed from earth, I solicit no other boon from my country, than the recogni- 

 tion of whatever service 1 may have thus rendered to my brother man, by the 

 introduction of this plant as a sovereign and permanent provision of cheap and 

 nutritious food for the poor, and as an absolute preventive of famine through- 

 out all time. When making our first experiments with this Esculent, some of 

 our cultivators having heard of the Chinese practice adopted there in extreme 

 cases of scantiness of land, when trenching four or five feet is pursued, assumed 

 therefrom the erroneous idea that this was the necessary culture required. 

 Nothing could be more erroneous. The usual growth of the root is 10 to 

 12 inches in length, and such is the average crop in ordinary farm culture , 

 an extra growth to 15 or even 20 inches may be forced by deeper culture and 

 more deeply enriching the soil. But we now have eight varieties of every form. 

 Some are round, some ovate, others short oval, others a longer oval, and then 

 we have oblong varieties that average 5 to 6 inches in length, and others aver- 

 aging about 7 to 8 inches, and longer ones of 10 to 12 inches in length. They 

 vary in color, several varieties having snow white flesh, others straw color, yel- 

 low, and others of a reddish tinge. Thus every cultivator can choose a variety 

 to suit himself, the same as with potatoes. In the vicinity of Pekin, 40° 

 north, they cultivate more than fifty varieties, which are particularly described 

 in their Agricultural Books. These improved varieties have not been obtained 

 by chance, as our seedling potatoes have been, but societies have devoted their 

 special attention to the attainment of superior improved varieties for ages be- 

 fore Europe had emerged from its barbarism. 



I have announced the Chinese Northern Yam to be the most important Es- 

 culent as food for Man, which God and Nature in their benign provision for our 

 race, have placed upon our globe, and I base this assertion on the following 

 facts : 



