“Oh, goody,” said the boy named Billy. “Baked potatoes for
supper--I can smell them--I am certainly grateful to Old Ireland
for sending us her wonderful potatoes. I’m going to have cream on
mine and eat every bit of the jacket.”
“So shall I,” said Somebody, laughing. “I don’t know of anything
more appetizing than a big well-baked potato, but I must tell
you, Billy Boy, that the cause for gratitude is the other way
around--Ireland has America to thank for potatoes. But we surely
owe her a vote of thanks for showing us what a useful article of
food we were neglecting to use.”
“Why! Where did the potato come from if not from Ireland--they’re
always spoken of as Irish Potatoes--” said the boy named Billy.
“The botanical books have this to say about it,” said Somebody.
“Potato--Solanum tuberosa--a native of Chile, Peru, and the Rocky
Mountains of North America.
“The potato was taken to England from America in the early part
of the 16th century by Sir Francis Drake who saw in it a valuable
food for cattle. But when the grain crops failed in 1772 the
people, especially those in Ireland, began to grow the potato
extensively for food for the people, and as it was so easily
raised it soon became very popular, and was eagerly adopted by
the Irish as their very own.
“In the United States the growing of early potatoes for northern
markets is an important industry as far south as Florida and the
Bermudas; but potatoes flourish best in climates which are just
too cool for corn. There is a belt of 120,000,000 acres, running
from Newfoundland, maritime Canada, and New England, through New
York, Pennsylvania, and the American and Canadian Lake region,
and by way of the Yukon Valley almost into the Arctic Circle,
where potatoes have been found amazingly productive. The giant
Idaho and Montana potatoes, which often weigh several pounds, are
favorites for baking.
“Growing from seed seldom produces satisfactory potatoes, but
seedsmen plant them in the hope of discovering new and desirable
varieties, as did Burbank when he grew from seed the potato which
bears his name. There are now perhaps a thousand well-developed
varieties, while at the time of the American Revolution there
were only two, the red and the white. In growing potatoes, the
most perfect tubers should be chosen, cut in pieces and planted;
the new plants grow from the eyes or buds on the cuttings.
“The cultivation of the potato has played an important part in
the history of Europe. In certain parts of Germany it helped to
check the famines caused by the Thirty Years’ War. By 1688 it had
become the staple food of the Irish peasantry, and the failure
of the potato crop in 1845 and the resulting famine started the
first great wave of Irish immigration to the United States.”
“I was reading an old poem about that Irish famine the other
day,” said the boy named Billy, “where a little boy was begging
his mother for just one grain of corn--I felt so sorry for him,
but I can see now that he suffered hunger so that all the other
children in the world might have good food all their lives--I
hope someone gave him a nice hot baked potato before he got too
hungry. There’s the dinner gong--Hurrah for the Irish!”
“Hurrah for us, too!” said Somebody.
“Sure,” said the boy named Billy.
[Illustration: Wherever his Regiment ... went, there was Old Abe!]