On the Cultivated Potato. 
273 
historical retrospect from the practical British farmer's stand- 
point would be a convenient method of logically conveying 
some useful information and much food for reflection. I do not 
pretend to be a man of science. I do not dogmatise ; I seek 
only to elicit information, and to bring to bear on the present 
inquiry a mind, naturally inclined that way and trained from 
boyhood to practical investigations. When I look over the 
hedge into the vast domain of science, it is with cap in hand, 
to beg for information ; if need be, for correction. Indeed, 
that increasing domain in these days must, for profitable culti- 
vation, be parcelled out into many various-sized farms and fields 
— it is essential, in scientific economy as in political, that there 
should be organized division of labour. 
" I laboured," said that fine old potato-grower, Gerard* — and 
at the present day what could be better said — " 1 laboured with 
the soil to make it fit for the plant, and with the plants to make 
them delight in the soil in order that they might prosper as in 
their native country." As in 1597, so in 1884, this is a golden 
rule of culture. fShakspeare f mentions the potato twice only, 
and then in reference to their supposed erotic qualities : — " Let 
the sky rain potatoes. . . . Let there come a tempest of provo- 
cation." The great Lord Bacon, for whose comprehensive 
mind nothing was too great and nothing was insignificant, 
busied himself scientifically and economically with the then 
novel potato-plant. A great delicacy in the time of King James 
the First, potatoes sold for two shillings a pound — two shillings 
in those days being a considerable sum. Some years later, 
namely in 1G63, Mr. Buckland of Somersetshire called the 
attention of the Royal Society to the cultivation of the plant as 
of national importance ; his suggestion was cordially adopted by 
that illustrious body. The importance of the potato as " food 
for swine, cattle, and poor people," and as a safeguard against 
famine, having, during thirty subsequent years, been esta- 
blished, J Sir Robert Southwell, probably as a consequence, in- 
formed the Fellows of the Royal Society that to succour the 
starving, when the civil wars had devastated the corn-crops, his 
grandfather first cultivated potatoes in Ireland, and that he had 
them from Sir Walter Raleigh. Yet the potato had still t() 
struggle for recognition, because a hundred years after their first 
introduction there is no mention of it in a then standard book, 
'The Complete Gardener.'§ However, a favourite old book of 
mine, ' The Gentleman's Recreations,' 1710, contains the follow- 
ing patronising notice of the new esculent: "it is greatly in 
* Gerard, Herball, 1597. 
t ' Jlerry Wives,' act v. sc. 5. Troil. and Cress., act v. sc. 2. 
X Dec. 13, 1693. § Loudon & Wise, 1719. 
VOL. XX. — S. S. T 
