42 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Potatoes boiled or steamed, and served up whole on the dinner 

 table ; in fact, we make Potatoes in this form as much a standing 

 dish as we do the loaf of bread on our breakfast tables. We 

 have many diverse uses for the Potato, such as converting it 

 into that useful element in our underclothing, starch, wherewith 

 to give us a little stiffness when we are naturally disposed to 

 be limp. We convert it into alcohol, and help in that way to 

 furnish the devil with a good share of the sons and daughters of 

 Adam. We have worthier purposes, however, and desiccate 

 Potatoes, so as to make them into a valuable healthy food for 

 exportation or use for our soldiers and sailors under conditions of 

 existence where green fresh foods are not obtainable. Whatever 

 may be the response to the question to which I have to make 

 reply, at least I have shown that the uses of the Potato are most 

 varied, and probably considerably exceed those referred to. 



Now, twenty-five years ago we had no great wealth of variety 

 in the Potato, and it is a significant fact that with the exception 

 of the Ashleaf Kidney, a sort which has kept its place chiefly 

 because hitherto there has been a lack of first early varieties, 

 there is hardly to be found in seed Potato lists one then in 

 ordinary cultivation. It is still very much the fashion on the 

 part of those who sigh after the days and years that are gone, 

 to declare that none of the modern Potatoes equal in quality the 

 Regents, Lapstones, Fortyfolds, and other sorts of the past. 

 Whenever I hear of the passing away of men of whom it may 

 apparently be said their places cannot be filled, I am consoled 

 with the reflection that the famous old proverb has never been 

 belied, " There's as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it." 

 Just so is it in the Potato family. We have had since the date 

 I refer to myriads of good Potatoes introduced, and plenty of 

 bad ones. We have myriads of good Potatoes new also, and a 

 far less number of bad ones, and we have at least an abundance 

 of varieties which, whilst equal in quality to the best of bygone 

 days, do by far excel them in robustness and productiveness. 

 Old age in man is apt to make many a good thing taste bitter in 

 the mouth which seems sweet and pleasant to youth, and were 

 I to aver that now to me there are no such Apples as I found in 

 boyish days, I should fitly be laughed at, for we have now such 

 Apples as could hardly have been dreamed of fifty years ago ; 

 and yet my complaint would in part be true, because I have 



