It is one of the pleasing characteristics of an old and highly civilized country, that appropriate local names for the smaller hamlets, farms, and single rural dwellings, are in general and familiar use. Every thing which gives to the household home, whether of rich or poor, a pleasant distinctive character, an additional hold on the memory and the affections of its inmates, must always prove a merit; and many, assuredly, have been the instances in which the familiar name of the family roof has continued through life a hallowed sound to the wanderers of the household band it once sheltered. In England, this custom—so natural, so kindly, when undisturbed by pretension—is very general, and it is almost needless to say that wherever these names go back for half a century or more, they are always appropriate, and often peculiar, or it may be, interesting from historical or other associations. In very many instances, not only do the farm-house and the cottage bear suitable names, but even the different fields about them are all marked in the same way; this meadow, that grain-field, yonder copse, the knoll beyond, shall each be called by some simple term, familiar to the household of the farmer of the present day, as it was perhaps to his forefathers of past generations. NOTE B. THE POTATO, p. 30. It has been clearly ascertained that the potato is indigenous to South America. Mr. Darwin, in his “Journal of Researches,” speaking of the Chonos Archipelago, on the coast of Chili, writes as follows: “The _wild potato_ grows on these islands in great abundance, in the sandy, shelly soil, near the sea beach. The tallest plant was four feet in height. The tubers were generally small, but I found one, of an oval shape, two inches in diameter; they resembled, in every respect, and had the same smell as English potatoes; but when boiled they shrunk much, and were watery and insipid, without any bitter taste. They were undoubtedly indigenous here: they grow as far south, according to Mr. Low, as lat. 50°, and are called _Aquinas_ by the wild Indians of that part; the Chilotan Indians have a different name for them. Professor Henslow, who has examined the dried specimens which I brought home, says they are the same with those described by Mr. Sabine,[77] from Valparaiso, but that they form a variety, which by some botanists has been considered specifically distinct. It is remarkable that the same plant should be found on the sterile mountains of central Chili, where a drop of rain does not fall for more than six months, and within the damp forests of these southern islands.” Darwin’s “Journal of Researches,” Vol. II. p. 23, American edition. NOTE C. THE WYCH ELM, (_Ulmus Montana_,) p. 46. The following account of the wych elm is given by Mr. Downing in his “_Landscape Gardening_:”