How Potatoes Became Popular.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXX, Issue 14, 3 April 1902, Page 13

How Potatoes Became Popular.

There is a strange impulse in human nature which makes people desire that which is forbidden. It exists sometimes in dumb animals

also, if the Irishman told the truth when he said that his pig never, would go to Cork unless it thought nnh maStei rn;™ ished to drive 4t toward ' a « Phls P er versity (says the • Aye Maria') was once taken advantage of for a very worthy purpose. A strange prejudice against the use of potatoes as a food used to exist in France. The wise ones declared that they produced leprosy and the people would neither eat them nor feed them to their cattle At last those high in authority thought of a plan. •Jf we tell people not to cat them they will want them at once,' they said ; 'and if it is made an offence to steal potatoes, there will be many to seek them.. So gardens all over France were set with the unpopular tubers, and word given out that some rare vegetables were growing for the king's express use ; furthermore, that anyono who molested them would bo prosecuted. This was a serious threat— to trespass against the king. But just as soon as the people were warned not to touch those potatoes they began to havo a fierce appetite for them, and the fields, left unguarded purposely, were pillaged from one end to the other. Some began to eat the despised vegetables and found them palatable ; others saved them for seed, and the result was that the potato was permanently introduced into France.