Item, the POTATO, earth-apple, murphy, or spud; the most useful, as well as the most exasperating gift of a bountiful Providence. Those inclined to obesity may skip the greater part of this chapter. You can employ a potato for almost anything. It comes in very handy for the manufacture of starch, sugar, Irish stew, Scotch whisky, and Colorado beetles. Cut it in half, and with one half you restore an old master, and with the other drive the cat from the back garden. More deadly battles have been waged over the proper way to cook a potato, than over a parish boundary, or an Irish eviction. Strong-headed men hurl the spud high in air, and receive and fracture it on their frontal bones; whilst a juggler like Paul Cinquevalli can do what he likes with it. Worn inside the pocket, it is an infallible cure for chronic rheumatism, fits, and tubercular meningitis. Worn inside the body it will convert a living skeleton into a Daniel Lambert. Plant potatoes in a game district, and if they come up you will find that after the haulms have withered you can capture all your rich neighbour's pheasants, and half the partridges in the country. A nicely-baked potato, deftly placed beneath the root of his tail, will make the worst "jibber" in the world travel; whilst, when combined with buttermilk, and a modicum of meal, the earth-apple has been known to nourish millions of the rising generation, and to give them sufficient strength and courage to owe their back rents, and accuracy of aim for exterminating the brutal owner of the soil. The waiter, bless ye! the harmless, flat-footed waiter, doesn't know all this. Potatoes to him are simply 2d. or 3d. in the little account, according to whether they be "biled, mash, or soty"; and if questioned as to the natural history of the floury tuber, he would probably assume an air of injured innocence, and assure you that during his reign of "thirty-five year, man and boy," that establishment had "never 'ad no complaints." The potato is most eccentric in disposition, and its cultivator should know by heart the beautiful ode of Horace which commences _Aequam memento rebus in arduis_ . . . The experiences of the writer as a potato grower have been somewhat mixed, and occasionally like the following:--Set your snowflakes in deeply-trenched, heavily-manured ground, a foot apart. In due time you will get a really fine crop of groundsel, charlock, and slugs, with enough bind-weed to strangle the sea-serpent. Clear all this rubbish off, and after a week or two the eye will be gladdened with the sight of the delicate green leaf of the tuber peeping through the soil. Slow music. Enter the Earl of Frost. No; they will not _all_ be cut off. You will get _one_ tuber. Peel it carefully, and place it in the pig-stye--the peeling spoils the quality of the pork. Throw the peeling away--on the bed in which you have sown annuals for choice--and in the late Spring you will have a row of potatoes which will do you credit.