THE TERCENTENARY OF THE INTRODUCTION OF POTATOS. 227 
Potatos, and Louis XVI. gave him fifty morgen of land to 
plant tliem on. When showing the first flowers of his Potatos, 
the king used them as a button-hole bouquet, Queen Marie 
Antoinette had them in the evening in her hair, and at once 
princes, dukes, and high functionaries went to Parmentier to 
obtain such flowers. All Paris talked of nothing but Potatos 
and the cultivator of them. The king said, France will 
thank you some time hence, because you have found bread for 
the poor." And France has not forgotten Parmentier, for I saw 
myself in 1882 Potatos growing on his grave in the grand 
cemetery of Paris, the Pere la Chaise, and I was assured that 
they were planted there every year, so that his services might 
never be forgotten by Frenchmen. 
From the above short and incomplete history of their intro- 
duction, it is clear that, although now so universally used on 
our tables, for the feeding of domestic animals, for distillation, 
and many other purposes, the Potato is one of those few plants 
which was only accepted for more general use after it had been 
known, and here and there cultivated, in Europe for fully one 
hundred or nearer two hundred years. And of how many more 
.famines should we have heard if Potatos had not been so 
generally cultivated during the last hundred years ? The 
breaking out of the Potato disease in 1846 and later was for 
the poor, one of the greatest calamities during the last half- 
century, and we rejoice that means have now been found to 
combat it. 
