The sweet Spanish potato (convolvulus batatus), a native of the East, was very early dispersed throughout the continent of Europe; and all the ancient accounts, in which the name of potato is mentioned, relate exclusively to this plant, a convolvulus: but our inquiry at present regards that root now in such extensive cultivation with us, which is an American plant[10] (solanum tuberosum). Perhaps the first mention that is known concerning the root is that of the great German botanist, Clusius, in 1588, who received a present of two of the tubers in that year from Flanders; and there is a plate of it among his rare plants. The first certain account which I know of by any English writer is in Gerard, who mentions, in his herbal, receiving some roots from Virginia, and planting them in his garden near London as a curiosity, in the year 1597. All the multiform tales which we have of its introduction by Hawkins, shipwrecked vessels, Raleigh, and his boiling the apples instead of the roots, are merely traditional fancies, or modern inventions, with little or no probability for support. There is some possibility that Sir Walter Raleigh might have introduced the potato into Ireland from America, when he returned in 1584, or rather after his last voyage, eleven years later; but if so, it was much confined in its culture, and slowly acquired estimation, even in that island; for Dr. Campbell does not admit that it was known there before the year 1610, fifteen years after Sir Walter’s final return. In England it seems to have been yet more tardy in obtaining notice; for the first mention which I can find, wherein this tuber is regarded as possessing any virtue, is by that great man Sir Francis Bacon, who investigated nature from the “cedar that is in Lebanon even unto the hyssop that springeth out of the wall: he spake also of beasts, and of fowls, and of fishes, and of creeping things,” in his history of “Life and Death,” written, probably, in retirement after his disgrace. He observes, that “if ale was brewed with one-fourth part of some fat root, such as the potado, to three-fourths of grain, it would be more conducive to longevity than with grain alone.” It was thus full twenty-four years after its being planted by Gerard, that the nutritive virtues of this root appear to have been understood: but with us there seems to have been almost an antipathy against this root as an article of food, which can scarcely excite surprise, when we consider what a wretched sort must have been grown, which one writer tells us was very near the nature of Jerusalem artichokes, but not so good or wholesome; and that they were to be roasted and sliced, and eaten with a sauce composed of wine and sugar! Even Philip Miller, who wrote his account not quite seventy years ago, says “they were despised by the rich, and deemed only proper food for the meaner sorts of persons;” and this at a time when that sorry root,