d otherwise yield. Its
cultivation was therefore spreading, but spreading, it would seem,
chiefly amongst the poor Celtic natives, who had to betake themselves to
the despised wastes and barren mountains. In the rich lowlands, and
therefore amongst the English colony (for whom alone all the
publications of those times were intended), the potato was still a
despised article of food. And to this the latter part of the above-cited
passage points. The proposal to sustain the people on potatoes and
buttermilk until the new corn should come in, is evidently an ironical
one, really meant to convey the degradation to which grazing had brought
the country. Seventy or eighty years later the irony became a sad and
terrible reality.

Meantime increased attention was given to the improvement of
agriculture, arising, in a great measure, from the widespread panic
which the passion for grazing had caused. Good and patriotic men saw but
one result from it, a dangerous and unwise depopulation, and they called
aloud for remedies against so terrible a calamity. The Author of the
"Answer to the Memorial" quoted above, says, with bitter sarcasm:--"You
are concerned how strange and surprising it would be in foreign parts to
hear that the poor were starving in a rich country.... But why all this
concern of the poor? We want them not as the country is now managed;
they may follow thousands of their leaders, and seek their bread abroad.
Where the plough has no work, one family can do the business of fifty,
and you may send away the other forty-nine. An admirable piece of
husbandry never known or practised by the wisest nations, who
erroneously thought people to be the riches of a country."

This anxious desire to prevent the country from "running into grazing,"
called forth many treatises and pamphlets on the improvement of
agriculture. Some writers undertook to show that agriculture was more
profitable than grazing; others turned their attention to improve the
implements of husbandry, and to lay down better rules for the rotation
of crops. Potatoes must have been pretty extensively grown at this time,
and yet they do not get a place in any of the rotations given. We have
fallow, wheat, oats, rye, turnips, saintfoin, lucerne, barley, peas,
beans, clover, rye-grass, and even buck-wheat, tares and lentils rotated
in various ways, but the potato is never mentioned. The growth of
turnips is treated with special importance. Hops, too, receive much