Atlanta tri-weekly journal. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1920-19??, 1923-06-09

VTTHAT would we do without the potato?
wv None is SO poor that he cannot afford
to eat it. None is so rich that he can
afford to disdain it. If all the potato plants
of Europe should suddenly perish and prove
irreplaceable a large part of the population
would have to starve or emigrate.
Yet the people fought the potato as though
it were the plague when it was first intro
duced into Europe. They were used to the
plague and regarded it as proper punishment
for their sins, but the potato coming from the
wild west of America, was new and therefore
to be feared.
Sir Francis Drake is supposed to have
brought the potato to England in 1886, hav-
ing perhaps taken the tubers in the course of
one of his privateering cruises, from some
Spanish vessel, together with other less val
liable booty, such as gold and gems. Any
how, he is credited with 1t by the Germans
who erected monument in his honor at Of
fenburg in 1854 and struck off a medal to
the British admiral as the savior of Germany
in 1916 when big potato crop enabled them
to hold out another year.
But such honors always come by slow
freight. 1t took people a hundred years or
more to learn that potatoes were good for
them to eat They fed them to their pigs and
cattle which, not having the prejudices of ra
tional men, took to them readily.
The Germans also fed their prisoners of
war on potatoes and it happened that one of
them was French chemist, Parmentter, who,
prisoner in Hanover for five years and had to
live largely potatoes. One would have
though he would have acquired a distaste for
them, but on the contrary when he was re-
leased he urged his countrymen to cultivate
the potato as a vegetable that in Times of
Necessity can be substituted for Ordinary
Food" But the French, even though starry
ing, would not eat potatoes until finally Par
mentier persuaded the king and queen to
taste some and wear bouquet of the bios
SONS. The people, seeing that the king and
queen were not poisoned, consented to sample
them for themselves.
In 1928 an attempt was made to introduce
potatoes into Scotland, but they were de-
nounced from the pulpit on two contradictory
counts; that they were not mentioned in the
Bible and SO not fit for food for Christians,
and that they were the forbidden fruit, the
cause of Adams fall. They were accused of
causing leprosy and fever.
In England the, effort of the Royal Society
to promote the cultivation Of the potato was
suspected to be conspiracy of capitalists to
Cypress the poor. The labor leader William
Corbett, said, "It has become of late the fash
ion to eXtol the virtues of potatoes 1t has
been to admire the writings of Milton and
Shakespeare" and he declared the working
men ought not to be induced to live on such
cattle food.
When the British army was sent to fight in
Flanders-not in 1914 but a hundred years
before-they acquired two shocking habits
IHey learned TO swear terribly ana they learn
ed to eat potatoes. The monks of Bruges had
introduced their cultivation by compelling
their tenants to pay part of their due in pota-
toes. The farmers, seeing that the monks
throve on them, began to some of the,
crop for their own USE
In Germany our own enjamin THOMPSON
having become Count Rumfort in Bavaria un-
dertook to clean the beggars out of Munich
When he had rounded them up he had to feed
them, and being a students of dietetics he de-
cided that potato soup was the cheapest and
most nutritious food he could find But he
had to smuggle the potatoes into the kingdom
secretly, otherwise he would have had hun
ger strike in the poorhouse
And so, thank to the initiative of scientists
kings and monks, and to the involuntary as
sistance of pigs, prisoners and paupers the
world got the inestimable benefit of potatoes |
L wonder what we fighting today as
wrong-headedly and vainly as potatoes were
fought by our forefathers.-Science Service.
GOLDEN AGE FOR FOSSIL HUNTERS
NEW YORK.-Prospectors seeking a new
fuel to supply the motors of the future are
helping scientists to solve the mysteries of the
fossil past. T. D. A. Cockrell professor of |
zoology of the University of Colorado, in a |
publication just issued by the American Mu-
scum of Natural History, describes the re-
mains of bird plumage millions of years old |
found in discarded oil shale near Roam creek
in western Colorado, and urges the impor- |