THE POTATO’S PROGRESS.

Putaruru Press, Volume IV, Issue 156, 28 October 1926, Page 3

THE POTATO’S PROGRESS.

EARLY CULTIVATION. It is generally .accepted without question that the potato was first introduced into Europe by Sir Walter Raleigh. There is a story, too. of how his gardener, to whom the tubers were given for experiment, disgusted by the sour fruit that appeared, gladly obeyed, hi s order to dig the plants ,up, only to discover with surprise that where he had planted on e tuber there were now several. In Germany it is Sir Francis Drake who figures as the legendary discoverer of the potato. In Qffenburg (Baden) there is an imposing statue in his honour, on which the navigator appears holding in his hand a potato plant with tubers attached. The value of the potato as a food was first recognised in Ireland, where sebn after its introduction in the seventeenth century it became the main food crop of the poorer classs. Apparently the first county in England to adopt the cultivation of the potato extensively was’ Lancashire, ibuit as la|te as 1770 it was not grown as a farm crop _n the southwest of England. This cultivation of the potato in Germany (according to the Journal of the Ministry of Agriculture) dates from 1774, whein Frederick the Great set himself the task of imposing its luse on his people. It wa a some years later that the cultivation was introduced into France.