ome of the wild animals, and wherever swine have been permitted to
run at large they have been destroyed.

Dr. Gesner shipped several bushels of the saa-ga-ban to the principal
agricultural societies in Great Britain, also to Halifax, and Nova
Scotia. The ordinary potato of this country does not yield more than
14 per cent. of starch, and it contains 76 per cent. of water. From
the best saa-ga-ban Dr. Gesner obtained 21 per cent. of starch, and
the quantity of water is reduced to 50 per cent. It also contains
vegetable albumen, gum, and sugar. From these facts it is evident that
the saa-ga-ban is much more nutritive than the potato, and the weight
of the tubers, in their wild state, compared with the weight of the
slender vine in the best samples, is equal in proportion to the common
cultivated potato in its ordinary growth. The starch is very white,
and closely resembles that made from the arrowroot. It is not
improbable that the quantity of water in the tuber will be increased
by cultivation; yet the fibrous parenchyma will be reduced, and taken
altogether, the nutritive properties will be increased; if the plant
improve as much by cultivation as the potato and many others have
done, its success is certain.

The North American Indians have several wild roots which they dig up
for sustenance when other food is exhausted. Among these are--1st, the
mendo, or wild sweet potato; 2nd, the tip-sin-ah, or wild prairie
turnip; 3rd, the omen-e-chah, or wild bean. The first is found
throughout the valleys of the Mississippi and St. Peter's, about the
basis of bluffs, in rather moist but soft and rich ground. The plant
resembles the sweet potato, and the root is similar in taste and
growth. It does not grow so large or long as the cultivated sweet
potato, but I should have thought it the same, were it not that the
wild potato is not affected by the frost. A woman will dig from a peck
to half a bushel a day.

The Indians eat them, simply boiled in water, but prefer them cooked
with fat meat.

The wild potato, of the north-west of America, is a general article of
food; it is called by them wabessepin; it resembles the common potato,
is mealy when boiled, and grows only in wet clay ground, about one and
a half feet deep. The crane potato, called sitchauc-wabessepin, is of
the same kind, but inferior in quality. The Indians use these for food
as well as the memomine, and another long and slender root called
watappinee. Probably