A POTATO CENTENARY.

Evening Post, Volume XXXII, Issue 130, 16 October 1886, Page 1 (Supplement)

A POTATO CENTENARY.

The celebration of the centenary of Parmentier, who did for France what Sir Walter Raleigh did for Ireland, that is to say, introduced there the homely and now iudispensable potato, commenced at Montdidier with natioal eclat. The title centenary is ill-chosen, for Parmentier was born in 1737, and the Jute should be more appropriately termed " the centenary of the intioduction of the potato into France." Paimentier's struggles and the obstacles he hud to encounter are well-known. Btfoie he made the potato an art icln of food and planned his celebrated banquet, to the sava/nte,

in which he showed how the esculent ; %mld be served up in 33 different I fashions, the French were under thi firm impression that potatoes gave men the leprosy, and were only good for pigs. At last Louis XV I . took uj« his cause, and even appeared at a gala given in the Babel Palace at Versailles with a bouquet of potato-blossoms in his button-hole. Parmentier died in Paris in 1813. Around his monument at Pere Lachnise is a parterre which is sown annually with potatoes The fetes will coiupriao uu agricultural bhow, a gymnustic competition, a horse and dog show, and a congvehs for fixing the names of different sorts of potatoes. On the last day will be a banquet, at which M. Goblet, the Educational Minister, will preside.