longs to a
poisonous family, but has roots (or tubers) very nourishing and
agreeable to eat. But if anybody was to eat the berries which follow the
showy flowers of the potato, they would most likely be made ill, nor are
the leaves wholesome to us, though they furnish food to the big
caterpillar of the Death's-head moth.

We have to thank the Romans for bringing into Britain many fruits and
vegetables; others, later on, came from France and Germany, or some
other part of Europe; but the potato we owe to America. The potato first
known in these islands, however, was not the one familiar now; it was
the sweet potato, or Batatus, cultivated by the Spanish and Portuguese;
it is supposed to have been brought over from the Continent early in
the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It was a vegetable much liked by those who
could get it, and this is the potato of which one of Shakespeare's
characters says, 'Let it rain potatoes and hail kissing comforts.'

No one can tell positively who, of the voyagers to America, towards the
end of the sixteenth century, it was who came upon the true potato and
brought it back to his own country, more as a curious plant than for any
other reason. Some have given the credit to the great Sir Walter
Raleigh, but it seems more likely that he himself was not the
discoverer, but one of his followers, named Heriot. In a book Heriot
wrote he exactly describes the potato amongst his finds, calling it
'open-awk,' a name he had heard in America. 'There are roundish roots,'
he says, 'some the size of a walnut, some much bigger; these hang
together on the other roots, and are good either boiled or roasted.' By
roasting he no doubt meant putting them in the hot ashes of a fire. The
question of how potatoes should be cooked seems to have been troublesome
at first. People dipped them in hot water, and then complained that they
were hard, or sticky like glue. Potatoes brought to the table of King
James I. are said to have cost two shillings a pound, and for a long
while the vegetable remained scarce, perhaps because people did not know
the best way to raise a crop as we do now, by planting slices of the
tubers. Several of the old books only refer to it as an ornamental
garden plant.

Sir Walter Raleigh does appear to have introduced this vegetable into
Ireland, at least. Going one spring to his estate at Youghal, Cork, he
took some potatoes, and gave them to his gardener, who planted them.
Fine specimens had grown