372 



EOOT CEOPS. 



alpine, perennial ; leaves, linear, lance- ovate; petals, obovate, retuse; 

 leaves of the calyx, somewhat acnte ; root, tuberous. It blossoms 

 in May. The seed is ripe in June, when the plant disappears." 



These roots may be collected along the sea coasts and principal 

 hikes and rivers of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, and Prince 

 Edward's Island, although they are not plentiful, for they are 

 greedily devoured by some of the wild animals, and wherever 

 swine have been permitted to run at large they have been 

 destroyed. 



Dr. Gesner shipped several bushels of the saa-ga-ban to the 

 principal agricultural societies in G-reat Britain, also to Halifax^ 

 and Nova Bcotia. The ordinary potato of this country does not 

 yield more than 14 per cent, of starch, and it contains 76 

 per cent, of water. Erom the best saa-ga-ban Dr, Gesner 

 obtained 21 per cent, of starch, and the quantity of water is 

 reduced to 50 per cent. It also contains vegetable albumen, 

 gum, and sugar. From these facts it is evident that the saa-ga- 

 ban is much more nutritive than the potato, and the weight 

 of the tubers, in their wild state, compared with the weight of the 

 slender vine in the best samples, is equal in proportion to the 

 common cultivated potato in its ordinary growth. The starch is 

 very white, and closely resembles tliat made from the arrowroot. 

 It is not improbable that the quantity of water in the tuber will 

 be increased by cultivation ; yet the fibrous parenchyma will be 

 reduced, and taken altogether, the nutritive properties will be in- 

 creased ; if the plant improve as much by cultivation as the 

 potato and many others have done, its success is certain. 



The North American Indians have several wild roots which 

 they dig up for sustenance when other food is exhausted. Among 

 these are — 1st, the mendo, or wild sweet potato; 2nd, the tip-sin-ah, 

 or wild prairie turnip ; 3rd, the omen-e-chah, or wild bean. The 

 first is found throughout the valleys of the Mississippi and St. 

 Peter's, about the basis of bluff's, in rather moist but soft and rich 

 ground. The plant resembles the sweet potato, and the root is 

 similar in taste and growth. It does not grow so large or long as 

 the cultivated sweet potato, but I should have thought it the same, 

 were it not that the wild potato is not affected by the frost. A 

 Vv^oman will dig from a peck to half a bushel a day. 



The Indians eat them, simply boiled in water, but prefer them 

 cooked with fat meat. 



The wild potato, of the north-west of America, is a general 

 article of food ; it is called by them wabessepin ; it resembles the 

 common potato, is mealy when boiled, and grows only in wet clay 

 ground, about one and a half feet deep. The crane potato, called 

 sitchauc-wabessepin, is of the same kind, but inferior in quality. 

 The Indians use these for food as well as the memomine, and an- 

 other long and slender root called watappinee. Probably it is the 

 first of these that is referred to by Nicollet, as the prairie potato. 

 " AH the high prairies (he says) abound with the silver-leafed 

 Fsoralia^ which is the prairie turnip of the Americans, the j)omme 



