acres of land.

The potato is not yet an article of so much importance in France, as
in England or the Low Countries, but within the last twenty years its
cultivation has increased very rapidly. It is mostly grown where corn
is the least cultivated. The quantity raised in 1818, was 29,231,867
hectolitres, which had increased in 1835 to 71,982,814 hectolitres.
About 2,000,000 hectolitres of chesnuts are also annually consumed in
France, a portion of the rural population in some of the Central and
Southern Departments living almost entirely on them for half the year.

In Peru dried potatoes are thus prepared:--Small potatoes are boiled,
peeled, and then dried in the sun, but the best are those dried by the
severe frosts on the mountains. In the Cordilleras they are covered
with ice, until they assume a horny appearance. Powdered, it is called
_chimo_. They will keep for any length of time, and when used required
to be bruised and soaked. If introduced as a vegetable substance in
long sea voyages, the potato thus dried would be found wholesome and
nourishing. A large and profitable business is now carried on, in what
is called "preserved potatoes," for ships' use, prepared by Messrs.
Edwards and Co., which are found exceedingly useful in the Royal Navy,
in emigrant ships, for troops and other services, from their
portability, nutritious properties, and being uninjured by climate.

Few persons are probably aware of the quantity of potatoes used in
England, America and the Continent, in the manufacture of starch,
arrowroot, and tapioca, &c., A starch manufactory in Mercer, Maine,
United States, grinds from 16,000 to 24,000 bushels annually of
potatoes, and makes 140,000 to 240,000 lbs. of starch, which finds a
ready market at Boston, at four dollars the hundred pounds. The New
England manufacturers prefer it to Poland starch. Another starch
manufacturer, in Hampden, America, consumes 2,500 bushels per day. In
a single district in Bavaria, in Germany, 400,000 lbs. of sago and
starch are manufactured from potatoes; 100 lbs. of potatoes are said
to yield 12 lbs. of starch. From experiments made in America, with
three varieties of potatoes, the long reds, Philadelphia, and
pink-eyes, it was found that the former yielded the most starch, viz.,
about 6 lbs. to the bushel. A bushel of potatoes weighs about 64 lbs.
The following table from Accum, gives the rate of starch and component
parts per cent. in different varieties:--