THE STORY OF A TUBER.
The planting of a tuber by Clusius, in 1588, in the Botanical Gardens at
Vienna, is often referred to as the introduction of the potato into
Europe. As a matter of fact, however, this was not the first planting,
for the Spaniards brought the real potato--_Solanum tuberosum_--home to
Spain about 1580. From Spain it extended to Italy, and became at once a
common article of food there. From Spain it also extended to Belgium,
and was cultivated there; and it was from a Belgian that Clusius got the
roots which he planted at Vienna in 1588.
Then, again, it has been said that Christopher Columbus was the first
European who ever tasted a potato, and that was in 1492, when he reached
Cuba. From Cuba he brought samples back with him to Genoa. This would
make our history one hundred years older, only it so happens that the
_Solanum tuberosum_ is not a native of these parts, and could not have
been at Cuba when Columbus was there. What he tasted and brought home
was the _Convolvulus batatas_, or sweet potato, a very different
article, although it gave its name, 'batatas,' to our tuber in the
modified form of 'potato.'
The real potato is a native of Chili, and it has been proved to the
satisfaction of naturalists that it did not exist in North America
before the arrival of Europeans. How, then, could Sir John Hawkins bring
it from Santa-Fe in 1565, or Sir Walter Raleigh from Virginia in 1584?
Well, in the first place, it was the sweet potato that Sir John brought;
and in the second place, before Sir Walter went to Virginia, the
Spaniards had brought there the real potato on returning from some of
their South American expeditions. In 1580 they sent it home, and there
is evidence that by 1580 the _Solanum tuberosum_ had been planted in
North America. By the time Raleigh brought it to England, however, it
was already a familiar root in Italy.
But did he bring it? There are some who say that it was Sir Francis
Drake who brought the roots and presented them to Sir Walter Raleigh,
who planted them on his estate near Cork in the year 1594. M'Culloch,
however, says that 1610 was the year of the introduction into Ireland,
and other writers say that Raleigh knew so little of the virtues of the
plant he was naturalizing that he caused the apples, not the tubers, to
be cooked and served upon his own table. Buckle, however, says that the
common, or Virginian, potato was introduced by Raleigh in 1586, and
Lyte, who wrote in that year, does not mention the plant; but Gerarde,
who published the first edition of his Herbal in 1597, gave a portrait
of himself with a potato in his hand.
Here, then, we have some negative certainties and some positive
uncertainties. Columbus did not take the real potato to Genoa in 1492;
Hawkins did not bring it to England in 1565. The Spaniards did take it
to Spain in or about 1580; but whether Raleigh was the first to bring it
to Britain, and in what year, remains open to doubt.
During the whole of the seventeenth century the potato was quite a
rarity in this country, and up to 1684 was cultivated only in the
gardens of the gentry. In Scotland it does not seem to have been grown
at all, even in gardens, before 1728. Phillips, in the History of
Cultivated Vegetables, says that in 1619 the price in England was one
shilling a pound. He further says that great prejudices existed against
it, that it was alleged to be poisonous, and that in Burgundy the
cultivation of it was prohibited.
These early prejudices against the potato are explainable on the
supposition that the people did not know how to cook it, and possibly
ate it raw, in which state it is certainly unwholesome, if not actually
poisonous. Then, again, it belongs to a family of ill-repute, the
_Solanacae_, of which the deadly nightshade and the mandrake are members,
as well as more honoured specimens like the tomato, tobacco, datura, and
cayenne-pepper plants. The mandrake, of course, was the subject of
ancient dislike, and perhaps it was natural for our superstitious
progenitors to regard with suspicion any relative of that lugubrious
root.
Even the tempting appearance of the tomato did not suffice to win favour
for it when first introduced into Europe, until somebody discovered
that, although undoubtedly sent by the infidels to poison the
Christians, the Bon Dieu had interfered, and transformed it into an
agreeable and wholesome fruit.
One meets with two references to the potato in Shakespeare, and these
are said to be the earliest notices of it in English literature. Thus in
Troilus and Cressida: 'The devil luxury, with his fat rump, and potato
finger, tickles these together!' In the Merry Wives, Falstaff says: 'Let
the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the time of Green Sleeves; hail
kissing-comfits, and snow Eringoes.'
There are several references in the early dramatists, which the curious
reader may find collected in a note in Steevens's Shakespeare, but which
hardly serve our purpose. There is one reference, however, by Waller,
which is interesting:
'With candy'd plantains and the juicy pine,
On choicest melons and sweet grapes they dine,
And with potatoes fat their wanton kine,'
because it seems to be the case that, prior to 1588, the Italian
peasants used the potato as food for their pigs as well as for
themselves.
We are constrained, however, to conclude that Shakespeare and the old
dramatists referred to the sweet potato, sometimes called the Spanish
potato. 'Eringoes,' mentioned by Falstaff, were candied roots. Eringo is
curiously suggestive of 'Gringo,' which was the name of contempt applied
by the Spaniards to all foreigners, but especially Englishmen. The word
would seem to have been imported by the gentlemen-adventurers from the
Spanish Main, in the time of Good Queen Bess. If we take 'candied roots'
in association with 'kissing-comfits,' we are compelled to conclude that
Falstaff's potato was the 'batatas,' the sweet, fleshy roots of which
were described by Columbus to be 'not unlike chestnuts in taste.'
Certain it is that the potato was not regarded in this country as an
object of national importance until 1662, when the Royal Society advised
that it should be planted. In the history of the Society there is the
record of a recommendation of a committee, dated 1662, urging all the
Fellows who possessed land to plant potatoes, and persuade their friends
to do the same, 'in order to alleviate the distress that would accompany
a scarcity of food.'
In Scotland, the first mention of the potato occurs in the household
book of the Duchess of Buccleuch and Monmouth. From Chambers's
Traditions of Edinburgh we learn that the price in 1701 was half-a-crown
a peck. Robertson, of Irvine discovered what he thought the earliest
evidence of potatoes in Scotland in the household book of the Eglinton
family. The date of this entry, however, was 1733, and Robert Chambers
showed that the date in the Buccleuch book was thirty-two years earlier.
Further information is given by the Duke of Argyle in Scotland As It
Was, And As It Is. There we learn that, until long past the middle of
the eighteenth century, little or nothing was known of the potato in
Scotland, although in after years it brought about the most prodigious
effects on the population. The Celts of Ireland first began to use it as
an adjunct, and then as a main article of food. From them it passed over
to the Celts of the Hebrides, and was introduced into South Uist by
Macdonald of Clanranald in 1743. The Highlanders, always suspicious of
novelties, resisted the use of it for some years; and the neighbouring
island of Bernera was not reached until 1752. It was soon found,
however, that the tuber would grow luxuriantly almost anywhere--even on
sand, and shingle, and in bogs. It was quickly planted in those patches
of ditched-off land known in the Highlands as 'lazy beds'--a not
inappropriate term, which in Ireland is applied to patches of potatoes
not sown in drills.
In Ireland and in the Highlands it quickly came to be the main food of
the people during the greater portion of the year; but in the Lowlands
of Scotland, and the rural districts of England, it was only used as a
food accessory, though it soon became an important article of commerce.
It has often happened that the potato crops have realized higher prices
than any other product of the farm.
It has been sometimes stated that the man who planted the first field of
potatoes in Scotland died within the last forty years. This is an error.
The first field planted in the Lowlands was at Liberton Muir, about the
year 1738, by a farmer named Mutter, who died in 1808. An attempt had
been made some years earlier by a farm-labourer, named Prentice, near
Kilsyth, but not as a farming operation.
In any case we do not get farther back than about 1730 for
potato-planting in Scotland, whereas in England, by 1684 the
recommendations of the Royal Society had been largely adopted,
especially in Lancashire, where the first serious beginning seems to
have been made. On the other hand, the cultivation has not extended so
rapidly in England as in either Ireland or Scotland.
The annual crop of Ireland is estimated as, on the average, equal to
about one thousand three hundred and twenty pounds per inhabitant; that
of Scotland, about three hundred and ninety pounds; and that of England,
about one hundred and twenty pounds. Germany is the next largest
producer to Ireland, and also the next largest consumer--the crops being
equal to about one thousand and sixty pounds per head. Holland and
Belgium each produce about five hundred and eighty pounds, and France
about five hundred and fifty pounds, of potatoes per inhabitant per
annum.
It is curious that, although Spain and Italy were the first cultivators
and users in Europe, the product of each of these countries is now only
about fifty-five pounds per head.
The annual value of the entire potato crop of Europe may be stated at
about one hundred and sixty million pounds; and that of the United
Kingdom at about one-tenth of this total. That of North America is about
twenty million pounds more; and it is a curious instance of the vagaries
of time that the _Solarium tuberosum_ is now known in America as the
'Irish potato,' to distinguish it from the batatas, or sweet potato.
All this immense development of cultivation does not complete the
topographical record of our tuber. It has been introduced into India,
and is now successfully cultivated both in Bengal and in the Madras
Presidency. It has found a home in the Dutch East Indies and in China;
and its tastes and habits are affectionately studied in Australia. But
as in the tropics it has to be grown at an altitude of three thousand
feet, or more, above sea-level, it can never become so common in hot
countries as in Europe.
It is not only as a food-plant that the potato has secured the respect
and affection of mankind. Starch is made from it both for the laundry
and for the manufacture of farina, dextrin, etc. The dried pulp from
which the starch has been extracted is used for making boxes. From the
stem and leaves an extract is made of a narcotic, used to allay pain in
coughs and other ailments. In a raw state the potato is used as a
cooling application for burns and sores. A spirit is distilled from the
tuber, which in Norway is called 'brandy,' and in other places is used
for mixing with malt and vine liquors. Many of the farinaceous
preparations now so popular in the nursery and sick-room are made
largely of potato-starch; and in some places cakes and puddings are made
from potato-flour.
To the potato are also ascribed properties of another kind. The folklore
of the plant is meagre, considering its wide distribution, but there are
a number of curious superstitions connected with it. In some parts there
is a belief that it thrives best if planted on Maundy Thursday; in
others, that if planted under certain stars it will become watery. In
Devonshire the people believe that the potato is a certain cure for the
toothache--not taken internally, but carried about in the pocket. It is
by several writers mentioned as a reputed cure for rheumatism in the
same way; only it is prescribed that, in order to be an effective cure
in such cases, the potato should be stolen. Mr. Andrew Lang mentions an
instance of faith in the practice of this cure, which he came across in
a London drawing-room. He regards this belief as a survival of the old
superstitions about mandrake, and as analogous to the habit of African
tribes who wear roots round the neck as protection against wild animals.
The value of the potato as food has been much discussed; but it seems to
rank next to the plantain, and a long way behind either rice or wheat.
The author of the Chemistry of Common Life has pointed to the remarkable
physiological likeness of tribes of people who live chiefly on rice,
plantain, and potato. The Hindu, the negro, and the Irishman are all
remarkable for being round-bellied, and this peculiarity is ascribed to
the necessity of consuming a large bulk of food in order to obtain the
requisite nourishment.
It is not, of course, the root of the plant which we consume. The tubers
known to the table are the swollen portions of the underground branches,
and the so-called 'eyes' are really leaf-buds. It is by cuttings from
these tubers, however, that the plant is mostly propagated. About
three-fourths of the weight of the potato is water, and this may
explain the injurious effect which excessive rainfall has on the crops.
The disease which attacks the plant, and has been the cause of Irish
famines, past and prospective, is a species of fungus, which first
attacks and discolours the straws, and then spreads downwards to the
tubers, increasing the quantity of water in them, reducing the quantity
of starch, and converting the albumen into casein.
When this disease once appears it is apt to spread over wide areas where
the same climatic influences prevail, and when the disease appears in
any strength the crops are rapidly rendered unfit for human food. The
trouble of the Irish peasantry of the West is that they have no
alternative crop to fall back on when the potato fails. Their plots are
too small for cereals, and they cannot be persuaded to cultivate
cabbages and other vegetables along with their tubers. It is thus that,
when the day of tribulation comes, the potato appears to be really a
curse rather than a blessing to agricultural Ireland.
There have been frequent projects for reverting to original types--that
is to say, for obtaining a fresh supply of the indigenous plant from
South America, and breeding a new stock, as it were. It is a possible
mode of extirpating the disease which may be resorted to.
The Irish famine of 1847 was due to the failure of the potato crops in
1846, preceded by two or three years of bad crops. This failure was due
to disease, and the eating of the diseased tuber brought on a
pestilence, so that altogether the deaths by starvation and epidemics in
that disastrous period amounted to nearly a million and a quarter
persons. To deal with the distress various sums were voted by Parliament
to the total amount of over ten millions sterling. This was supplemented
by private philanthropy in this country, and by generous aid from the
United States and some European countries. What was the actual money
cost to the world at large of the failure of the Irish potato crop in
1846 can never be accurately known; but the amount was so enormous as to
create a serious economic problem in connection with the homely tuber.
There have been several partial failures since in Ireland, although
nothing so extensive as that of 1846, and in 1872 the disease was very
bad in England. In that year, indeed, the importation of foreign
potatoes rose to the enormous value of one million six hundred and
fifty-four thousand pounds to supply our own deficient crops. In 1876,
again, there was great excitement and alarm about the 'Colorado beetle,'
an importation from America, which was destined, it was said, to destroy
all our potato-fields. But the beetle proved comparatively harmless, and
seems now to have disappeared from these shores.
The Englishman and Scotchman cannot do without his potato as an adjunct;
but the error of the Irishman is in making it the mainstay of his life.
The words of Malthus in this connection put the matter in a nutshell,
much as he has been abused for his theory of the effects of the potato
on population. 'When the common people of a country,' he says, 'live
principally upon the dearest grain, as they do in England on wheat,
they have great resources in a scarcity, and barley, oats, rice, cheap
soups, and potatoes, all present themselves as less expensive, yet, at
the same time, wholesome means of nourishment; but when their habitual
food is the lowest in this scale, they appear to be absolutely without
resource, except in the bark of trees--like the poor Swedes--and a great
portion of them must necessarily be starved.'