It is hard to realise the fact that three hundred years ago the potato was unknown in Europe, and we wonder what our ancestors could have done without a vegetable which is now regarded as indispensable. Yet, at the date of its introduction, it was so little thought of, that it is still a disputed point as to whom belongs the honour of having brought it over, and whether it came from Chili or Peru, where it grows wild, or from Virginia. We used to believe that Sir Walter Raleigh was this benefactor, but Sir John Hawkins (1565), Sir Francis Drake (1586), and Thomas Herriott (1585) are also credited with its first introduction; at any rate, most people are agreed that Ireland was its first European home, and that the neighbourhood of Cork was the spot where the earliest potato crop was raised. Nevertheless, a century after its first planting, Houghton, the botanist, writing in 1681, says: - 'The potato is a bacciferous herb with esculent roots, bearing winged leaves and a bell flower.....This, I have been informed, was brought first out of Virginia by Sir Walter Raleigh, and he stopping at Ireland, some was planted there, where it thrived very well and to good purpose, for, in their succeeding wars, when all the corn above ground was destroyed, this supported them, for the soldiers, unless they had dug up all the ground where they grew and almost sifted it, could not extirpate them. From thence they were brought to Lancashire, where they are very numerous, and now they begin to spread all the kingdom over. They are a pleasant food, boiled or roasted, and eaten with butter and sugar.' Fancy eating sugar with potatoes ! He then goes on to say, 'There is a sort brought from Spain that are of a longer form (Convolvulus Batatas), and are much more luscious man ours, for they are much set by, and sold for 6d. or 8d. a pound.' Sweet potatoes - which, by-the-by, are not potatoes at all - are now very little thought of in comparison with the commoner potato, and, although they are eaten and relished by the few, would certainly be rejected by the many, whilst the potato is cultivated everywhere, occupying 512,471 acres in Great Britain in 1877, and in the same year 7,964,840 cwt. were imported, valued at £2,348,749.

I well remember the terrible time of the first appearance of the potato blight in 1845, and the great change wrought by it in this favourite vegetable. Previously great fields of potatoes grew and flourished abundantly, producing their white or purple blossom, according to their kind, followed by green or purplish seed-pods, the haulm, when withered, being pulled up and burnt, or left to rot as manure, whilst the tubers were dug and pitted for winter use, the great aim being to preserve them from frost The consternation which took possession of people when they saw the haulm getting black and dying away, long before it was time for the blossom, may be imagined, and when it was found that the tuber was rotting in the ground, a wail went up from one end of the country to the other - and no wonder, for it meant to many in England, and to all in Ireland, a grievous famine. At first the pigs were fed on the diseased roots, but they soon got too bad even for pigs to eat; then it was found out that, if taken in time, the roots might be grated, and starch made from them, and so, at every cottage door sat women and children grating the fast-rotting roots into pans of water; but little could be gained by that, although potato starch is still used, and called English arrowroot. People, however, could not live on that, and soon got tired of trying, and the potatoes were left to rot in the ground. Year after year this went on, and no one seemed to know how to remedy the evil; but at last the natural history of the disease came to be known, and now by careful cultivation of sorts less liable to be attacked by the fungus which causes the disease, the potato again begins to hold up its head, and may be seen blossoming and bearing seed as before. But many of the sorts most prized prior to 1845 have entirely disappeared, and among them one which was the delight of our childhood, known as the China orange, which came to table in its skin, just bursting, and showing a beautiful red under coat, covering a great floury ball of most delicious flavour. The Irish, who may be supposed to know the best mode of cooking their favourite vegetable, always boil them in their skins, and in so doing retain the full flavour, but they also like them slightly hard in the middle - 'with the bones in,' as they say - which is not so much to English taste.

The latest method of preventing the potato blight is that recommended by Mr. Jensen, namely to disinfect the seed tubers by storing them for four or five days in a dry-air chamber, at a temperature of 100 to 105 degs. Fahrenheit; but others recommend syringing the leaves with a solution of sulphate of copper and quicklime, which is also said to increase the growth of the tubers.

Edible roots have always formed a large portion of man's food, from the most primitive times. Savages in all lands have their digging sticks, with which they turn up such things as experience has taught them will prove good to eat, and the most singular thing is that instinct appears to act with them as with the lower animals, preventing them from taking that which is poisonous; and where they find poisonous roots, as in many of the lily tribe, they have learnt to nullify the poison by roasting the root, or by scraping it and extracting the acrid juice by pressure or by soaking in water before cooking, as in the manioc, of which we wrote in a former chapter. But civilised man has not forsaken the habits of his remote ancestors, and still delves as Adam did for the produce of the soil, although he no longer depends upon the chance of finding a supply when needed, but plants and waters, weeds and watches, till he may dig the anticipated crop; and then he very commonly buries the roots again snugly beneath the soil, carefully covered up with straw and trenched round to keep the treasure from that which may corrupt, in order that he may have them sound and good during the frost and snows of winter, when most needed for the household, and for those domestic animals which form a large portion of his wealth, but which in early times had mainly to shift for themselves, and die of starvation when the grass of the field failed them.