THE COTTAGE GARDENER. 
September 23. 
holding. Such have been the consequences of the 
extreme subdivision of landed property in Ireland; and 
it has been fostered by the priest and the middleman, 
because each fraction of a holding is productive of 
further fees and increased rentals. 
Where, as in England and Scotland, the potato 
ground is only the poor man’s aid, not his all, it is 
indeed a blessing; and it is told ill these few words of 
j an allotment tenant: “There are but few days in the 
year, sir, on which we cannot get a meal’s help from it.” 
Most assuredly, therefore, do we think that the descend¬ 
ants of Raleigh might be as proud of a sprig of the potato 
foliage on their coat armour, as those of Appel de j 
j Kapoesang arc of its tubers, with which the Austrian 
j heralds have charged their shields.* 
There is every reason to believe that Chili, and espe¬ 
cially the neighbourhood of Quito, is the native country 
of the potato. It is there now found in a wild .state ; its 
slightly bitter tubers have been thence imported of late 
years; and cultivation has gradually raised from those 
tubers plants now producing crops of excellent potatoes. 
We learn, also, from Peter Cieca and Molina, that when 
the Spanish navigators first visited Chili and Peru, 
their inhabitants cultivated and ate a tuberous-rooted 
plant, which they called papas. Molina says there are 
two kinds: the wild, having small bitter tubers, and 
the other, improved by culture, so as to have tubers 
grateful to the palate.f 
The Spaniards imported the potato into Spain, where 
it was called battata, from the resemblance the tubers 
bore to those of the sweet potato ( Convolvulus battata), 
and from thence it was communicated to Italy. This 
was at the close of the 15th, or early in the Kith cen¬ 
tury ; yet at the latter period, the potato was so little 
known, even to botanists, that Lobe], in his “ Plantarum 
seu Stirpium Historia," published at Antwerp in 1576, 
has no mention of it, though he describes and figures 
the sweet potato. Gorarde, in England, however, and 
Caspar Bauhine, at Basil, both in the year 1526, gave 
notices of their acquaintance with it, yet still evidently 
as a rarity. 
Caspar Bauhine, in his “ Phytopinax scu eneumeratio 
Plantarum,” published at Basil in 1500, first bestowed 
upon it the botanical names it still retains— Solatium 
tuberosum; and his description is also the first occurring 
that is full as well as accurate. Some of the particulars 
intimate a knowledge of the consequences of certain 
modes of treatment that wo have been lately, and, it 
would seem, mistakenly, considering of recent discovery. 
The root, he says, is round, but not completely so, of a 
* Dc Kapoesang was the first successful cultivator of the potato in 
Austria. 
t P. Cieca’s Chronicle, published in 1553. Molina’s Hist, of Chili, 
The Spaniards first visited South America in the year 1492, and there 
is no rational doubt of this being the earliest period in which the potato 
became known to Europeans. Clusius and some others have surmised 
that the nrachidna described by Theophrastus was the same plant, 
although the suggestion docs not appear with a single reason to sustain 
it; but it seems to us that the arachidna is identical with the aracidna 
of Pliny (Hist. lib. xxi. cap. 20), and this appears to have been synony¬ 
mous with our truffle. Pliny says it was a root having no leaf, or stem, 
l or any other part above ground. Cortueius had a similarly groundless 
j opinion as to the identity of the potato with the picnocomus of Dios- 
i corides. This certainly was not the potato, for it is described as growing 
I wild in southern Europe in stony places, as having acrid leaves, and seeds 
; narcotic, producing heavy, disturbed sleep. 
tawny or dark reddish colour, and is usually dug out of 
the earth in the winter, being repluuted iu the spring. 
“ Nevertheless, if left in the soil it will again vegetate ( 
in the spring. Very often the root becomes rotten after , 
it has put forth the stem.” It was known as the Spanish, 
or Indian pappar, and endured without difficulty the 
climate of Europe, for he had seen it in the open ! 
gardens of some physicians iu the Netherlands. 
In his “ Prodromus," published in 1071, Bauhine gives 
a drawing of the potato, showing the tubers as both 
round and oblong, and enters still more fully into 
its description. He says it w'as first brought from 
Virginia to England, was thence exported to France, 
and from the latter country was distributed to other 
parts of Europe. In Virginia it is called openawelc, as 
is stated by Peter Cieca, and in Gomara’s History of the 
Indies. About Quito it was called papas, and thence 
it was sometimes called the Indian, or Spanish papas; 
and in Germany grublingbauin, that is, the tuber-bearing 
shrub. Bauhine says that he first delineated it in 1590, 
from a specimen iu the garden of Dr. Scholtz, who pro¬ 
bably received it from Clusius. 
Peter de Sivry, Lord of Walhain, had the potato, in 
1587, from a friend of the pope’s legate in Flanders. It 
was brought from Italy under the name of tortufoli, a 
name applied to all underground tubers by the Italians. 
The Lord of Walhain gave two of the tubers to Clusius 
in 1588. [Clusius Historia Plant.) 
Our countryman, Gerarde, in 1590, specifies the potato 
under the title of Papus liyspanicus, in the catalogue of 
plants cultivated by him in his garden at Chelsea.* In 
his “ Ilerball" published the year following, he describes 
the potato accurately.-)- After particularizing the sweet 
j potato, which he calls “ Sisarum Peruvianum, sine Batata 
Hispanarum, Potatus or Potatoes,” he proceeds to the 
consideration of the common potato, under the title of 
“Potatoes of Virginia. Battata Virginiana sive Vir- 
giniauorum et Pappus.” - The woodcut and the doscrip- 
tion demonstrate that the plant he had before him was 
our common potato; and he proceeds to observe, that 
“ it groweth naturally in America, where it was disco¬ 
vered, as reporteth C. Clusius; since which time I have 
received roots thereof from Virginia, otherwise called 
Norembcga, which grow and prosper in my garden as 
j in their own native country.” J After stating the time 
j of its blooming, &c., Gerarde adds, “ The Indians call it j 
papus (meaning the roots), by which name the common ; 
potatoes (sweet) are known to them. We have the 
name proper unto it mentioned in the title, because it 
hath not only the shape and proportion of potatoes, but 
also the pleasant taste and virtues of the same; so we 
may call it, iu English, potatoes of America or Virginia. 
Being likewise a food, as also a meat for pleasure, either 
roasted in the embers, or boiled, and eaten with oil, 
* Oatalogua arborum fruticum, etc. in horto, J. Gerardi, civis ct chi- \ 
rurgi Londinensis nasccntium. London. 1596 . 
t Ilerball, or General Hist, of Plants. London. 1597. 
t At the end of the preface is a portrait of Gerarde; and it deserves 
notice, that he holds in his hand a sprig of the potato—leaves, flowers, 
and fruit—as if lie considered it one of the most remarkable novelties of 
his time. 
