The First Irish Potatoes

Sir Walter Raleigh was an nnprincipled adventurer and failed as an administrator and colonizer. but he had a most commendable taste for planting and gardening, and in these branches of effort his influence remains potent. Three hnndred years have passed since he lived in Ireland, in the connty of Cork, on the vast estáte which had been bestowed upon him, but the yellow wall flowers which he brought to Ireland from the Azores still flourish and bloom in the very spot where he planted tbem. Near by, at Yonghal, near Cork, ou the shores of the Black water estuary, etands the Affane cherry which he planted. Some cedars which he biought to Cork are still growing at a place called Tivoli. Four yew treeR, whose branches have grown and interlaced into a sort of surmner house, are pointed out as ha ving sheltered Raleigh when he fiist smoked tobáceo in his garden at Youghal. Raleigh tried to make tobáceo grow in Great Britain, but the climate was not found suitable to it. He succeeded, however, by introducing the habit of smoking it, in making it grow in plenty in other places. More important to the world than the spot where Raleigh sat and smoked bis Ii ian weed is another spot in his gar(. ; at Myrtle Grove, in this same Voughal. Tbis spot is still bounded by the town wall of the thirteenth century. It was here that Raleigh first planted a curious tuber bronght from America, which throve vastly better than his tobacco plants did. This tuber Raleigh insisted was gooil to eat, though common report for a long time pronounced it poisonous. Some roots from his vines he gave to other land owners in Munster. They cultivated them and spread thern abroa:! trom year to year. This plant was the Irish potato. Before many generations it became the staple food of the Irish people - almost the only food of a great many of them. It was the "Irish potato" which carne back to America and became the groundwork, so to speak, of the American farmer's and workingman's daily breakfast and dinner. Sir Walter's curious experiment in acclimatizatiou became an economie step of the very first consequence, and the spot at Youghal which was its scène deserves marking with a monument mnch more than do the places where the blood of men