allied wild species and possibly the ancestral one, Ipomoea fastigiata, is 
quite common. Sweet potatoes, like the common potato, corn and beans 
are of extremely ancient cultivation in America, the Spaniards and other 
early explorers finding them common among the Indian tribes of south- 
ern Mexico, the West Indies, Peru, and northern South America. In 
fact, the name potato rightfully belongs to this sweet-tubered form of the 
morning-glory family, as it, and not the Irish potato, was the common 
potato of Elizabethan and Shakespearian times, its Spanish name “batatas" 
being corrupted into the English “potato.” Long afterwards the common 
potato was called “Irish potato,” in distinguishing between them. Al- 
though introduced to Europeans very soon after the discovery of America, 
its culture and dissemination was slow and its popularity in France was 
increased by the Parisian restauranteurs agreeing as a body to buy and 
serve it on their tables. The Empress Josephine, remarks a Frenchman, 
true to her Creole taste, was exceptionally fond of them and increased 
their popularity by ordering large quantities planted on the French 
Crown lands. America, however, is still said to be the largest consumer, 
the estimated crop for 1917 being 87,141,000 bushels, or about one-fifth of 
the estimated Irish potato crop for the same year. This amount, if ra- 
tioned out would allow nearly a bushel to each man, woman and child in 
our country, but unfortunately storage difficulties are so great that it has 
been said that for every sweet potato eaten, three rot or are otherwise 
lost, hence each sweet potato consumer pays for three potatoes he never 
sees. In the south, certain varieties of sweet potatoes are erroneously 
called yams, a plant most remotely related to the morning-glory family. 
Most of the vegetables so far mentioned have been American in 
origin, but the great bulk of the green grocer’s wares, so far as diversity 
is concerned, are natives, like ourselves, of the old world. Of forty- 
four common market vegetables of New York City, thirty-five are of 
European, Asiatic or of African origin, while one, the common mushroom, 
is native to the whole northern hemisphere, though first introduced as an 
inviting dish by Europeans. If many of the uncommon vegetables of the 
semi-foreign city markets, such as garbanzos, bamboo sprouts, water 
chestnuts, and sprouted beans are included, the percentage of old world 
vegetables is still higher. Of these thirty-five or more kinds, nearly all 
come from Europe and Asia — a rather strange fact when one considers 
the luxuriance and diversity of tropical plant life. 
In a large number of cases, as you have probably already surmised, 
these vegetables have been cultivated by man so long that the identification 
of their wild ancestors is somewhat in the nature of a guess, especially 
when reliance is placed on character comparisons. For, many of the vari- 
ations among cultivated plants are so striking that with our commonly 
accepted notions regarding variability and heredity, it seems almost 
impossible that such a plant as the common wild cliff cabbage of Europe 
and Asia could give rise to all our cultivated forms of cabbage. Yet, if 
this plant is not the ancestor, what plant is? Of all the plants botanists 
know, it most nearly resembles what they believe that ancestor should 
look like. Growing on the bleak chalk cliffs of Dover or along the Medi- 
