potatoes, one which ’twas said “would grow in powdered glass.” The 
Parisian crow’d looked on in amused contempt, which later turned to 
stupified astonishment, when they gathered to witness the harvest. During 
the day when the potatoes were being dug, the immense crowd was kept 
back and the potatoes guarded by soldiers, but these guards were removed 
at night to encourage stealing. The yield was nine-fold, even under such 
unfavorable conditions — not counting those stolen, which no doubt must 
have been considerable. 
In 1882, the weekly consumption of potatoes in London amounted to 
500 tons, and the quantity sold in its streets between September and April 
through the “baked potato hawker’s” cry of “W arm your hands and fill 
your belly for a ha’ penny” was estimated at 60 tons weekly. To-day, the 
world’s crop is over five billion bushels and they are grown in and known 
to almost every country on the globe. One acre has been known to yield 
as high as 1,200 bushels, although the average for the most favorable 
potato countries lies between 150-210 bushels per acre. One acre of pota- 
toes often supplies as much food as ten acres of wheat. 
As second cousins of the potato, we have tomatoes, red peppers and 
the egg-plant. The first of these is regarded as a form of the wild, 
small-fruited tomato of Peru, similar in many respects to our present-day 
plum and cherry tomatoes. So far as our records go, many forms of this 
species were introduced into America and Europe, and the tomato, as 
with many other cultivated plants, probably owes much of its great 
diversity in kinds to a large number of wild forms belonging to one vari- 
able species, the characters of which have been shuffled and combined by 
artificial and natural crossing. It is extremely doubtful if the ancient 
Peruvians appreciated the good qualities of this plant enough to exten- 
sively cultivate it. And it is certain that less than a hundred years ago, 
even Americans looked with suspicion upon it as the cause of various ills, 
such as cancer, and grew it largely for ornament instead of food. There 
were several types of these “love apples” as they were called in those 
days, all of which were comparatively small fruited (2.5 inches in dia- 
meter), except one form called “Large Red,” which sometimes produced 
fruits over 4 inches through. These large fruits were somewhat ribbed 
and angular, but on the whole, fairly smooth. Then appeared a giant 
fruited form of this, evidently a monstrous or fasciated condition, so far 
as the fruit and blossom was concerned. The fruits often weighed 4 
pounds, and sometimes even over 5 pounds, but they were deeply ribbed, 
corrugated, and almost anything but smooth. Through the efforts of 
various seedsmen and especially those of the pioneer scientific farmer 
and one time street commissioner of New York City, Colonel Waring, 
tomato varieties with smooth skins, solid flesh and of large size, were 
obtained by crossing the small, smooth, watery, seedy types with these 
large fruited forms. One of these was the Trophy, which is said to 
have been an epoch maker in commercial tomato growing. Seeds of the 
Trophy, first distributed in 1870, were sold for five dollars per packet of 
20 seeds, single seeds commanding 25 cents each. Tomatoes of perfect 
shape and smoothness weighing almost a pound and a half were obtained 
from this variety. Tomatoes were first used commonly for food in Italy, 
