The days of Scipios and Catos,
The Western world pursued its ways
Triumphantly without potatoes."

If, however, the shortage of cereals demands that potatoes should
be used as a substitute for wheat, I suggest that, instead of being
subjected to the barbarous treatment described above, they should be
granted a painless death by chloroform or some other anæsthetic.

I am, Sir, yours truly,

POTATOPHIL.


* * * * *


ERIN'S INCUBUS.

SIR,--A great deal of fuss is being made over Irish potato-cakes. Why
Irish? The tradition that the potato is the Irish national vegetable
is a hoary fallacy that needs to be exploded once and for all. It is
nothing of the sort. The potato was introduced into the British Isles
by Sir WALTER RALEIGH, a truculent Elizabethan imperialist of the
worst type, transplanted into Ireland by the English garrison, and
fostered by them for the impoverishment of the Irish physique. The
deliberations of the National Convention now sitting in Dublin will
be doomed to disaster unless they insist, as the first plank of their
programme, on the elimination of this ill-omened root. If ST. PATRICK
had only lived a few centuries later he would have treated the potato