Chatterbox, 1905 Part 88

2. A price fixed after all deductions have been made.

3. To gaze, to look with fixed eyes.

4. To disperse, to throw loosely about.

5. Kindnesses, good wishes, benefits, favours.

C. J. B.

[_Answers on page 290._]

ANSWERS TO PUZZLES ON PAGE 230.

10.--_Valparaiso._

1. V eneration.

2. A nimosity.

3. L inoleum.

4. P aragon.

5. A melia.

6. R azor.

7. A rch.

8. I ce.

9. S o.

10. O

11.--Tar-tar.

THE POTATO.

Amongst our English vegetables, the potato is the most abundant and useful. It is liked by nearly all, and it is indeed a chief article of food in some districts. Other vegetables are largely eaten--cabbages and turnips, for instance--but the potato is in the greatest demand.

We have in the potato an ill.u.s.tration of a plant which belongs to a poisonous family, but has roots (or tubers) very nourishing and agreeable to eat. But if anybody was to eat the berries which follow the showy flowers of the potato, they would most likely be made ill, nor are the leaves wholesome to us, though they furnish food to the big caterpillar of the Death's-head moth.

We have to thank the Romans for bringing into Britain many fruits and vegetables; others, later on, came from France and Germany, or some other part of Europe; but the potato we owe to America. The potato first known in these islands, however, was not the one familiar now; it was the sweet potato, or Batatus, cultivated by the Spanish and Portuguese; it is supposed to have been brought over from the Continent early in the reign of Queen Elizabeth. It was a vegetable much liked by those who could get it, and this is the potato of which one of Shakespeare's characters says, 'Let it rain potatoes and hail kissing comforts.'

No one can tell positively who, of the voyagers to America, towards the end of the sixteenth century, it was who came upon the true potato and brought it back to his own country, more as a curious plant than for any other reason. Some have given the credit to the great Sir Walter Raleigh, but it seems more likely that he himself was not the discoverer, but one of his followers, named Heriot. In a book Heriot wrote he exactly describes the potato amongst his finds, calling it 'open-awk,' a name he had heard in America. 'There are roundish roots,'

he says, 'some the size of a walnut, some much bigger; these hang together on the other roots, and are good either boiled or roasted.' By roasting he no doubt meant putting them in the hot ashes of a fire. The question of how potatoes should be cooked seems to have been troublesome at first. People dipped them in hot water, and then complained that they were hard, or sticky like glue. Potatoes brought to the table of King James I. are said to have cost two shillings a pound, and for a long while the vegetable remained scarce, perhaps because people did not know the best way to raise a crop as we do now, by planting slices of the tubers. Several of the old books only refer to it as an ornamental garden plant.

Sir Walter Raleigh does appear to have introduced this vegetable into Ireland, at least. Going one spring to his estate at Youghal, Cork, he took some potatoes, and gave them to his gardener, who planted them.

Fine specimens had grown up in August, but the gardener did not think the berries were of any good, and told Sir Walter he did not admire the wonderful American plant. 'Then pull it up and throw it away,' said Sir Walter; but when the man saw the potatoes on the roots, he thought differently.

The first place in England where the potato was grown in fields was North Meols, Lancashire, about 1694. For many years the Scotch only grew it as a curiosity, till Thomas Prentice, of Kilsyth, stocked his garden with potatoes in 1728, and distributed them amongst the villages near.

Early in the reign of Queen Victoria, it had become abundant, especially in Ireland; but the potato disease or murrain caused great distress in 1845 and later, nor has it ever been got rid of entirely. The potato has been introduced to our Indian Empire, and though it was unpopular at first, the people have since become partial to it.

J. R. S. C.

DOCTOR ABERNETHY'S ADVICE.

Doctor Abernethy, the great surgeon, was famous for his short, pointed sayings and good advice, as well as for his skill as a doctor. One day a gentleman who was accustomed to live in great luxury, and who suffered from gout in consequence of this easy life, came to consult him. He told the great surgeon all his ailments, and how he usually lived, and asked what he ought to do.

'Live on sixpence a day--and earn it!' was the reply of Dr. Abernethy.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "'Live on sixpence a day--and earn it!'"]

[Ill.u.s.tration: "Seven miles high!"]

CRUISERS IN THE CLOUDS.

VIII.--THE HIGHEST FLIGHT--SEPTEMBER 5, 1862.

The frequent and successful voyages in balloons at last led scientific men to wonder if the ascents might not be used for solving some of nature's riddles, and so conferring benefits on mankind, instead of being undertaken only as pleasure trips. It was to help answer this question that, in 1862, Mr. James Glaisher began a series of balloon voyages. He was by no means the pioneer in this cla.s.s of enterprise, for many others--both French and English--had been up with the same object some years before. But as Mr. James Glaisher, with his captain, Mr.

c.o.xwell, went higher than any one before or after, his flight ought to be given special attention.

In order to make careful observations, it was necessary to take a large number of delicate instruments, and these were arranged on a board, which rested its ends on either side of the car. Seated before this narrow table, Mr. Glaisher meant to read the secret of the skies. When all was ready, Mr. c.o.xwell weighed anchor, and a few moments later the city of Wolverhampton, from which they rose, was almost lost in the vast tract of country upon which their eyes rested.

It was the third ascent these gentlemen had made together, and the wonders Mr. Glaisher had witnessed on the two previous occasions must have been more than enough to lead him to seek for more. He had pierced the densest rain-clouds, and had seen the shadow of the balloon on the white upper surface of the clouds surrounded by lovely circular rainbows. He had peeped through holes in these clouds on to the world beneath, which looked more like a misty picture than real meadows and towns and rivers. Such experiences were more beautiful than any tales of fairyland--because they were true.

But to-day he was to have a new and strange journey. At five thousand feet above ground the balloon entered a ma.s.s of rain-clouds, one thousand feet thick, and four minutes later they broke through into sunshine. Mr. Glaisher tried to take a photograph of these clouds from above, but the balloon rose too rapidly and kept turning round. At twenty-one thousand feet (or four miles high) Mr. c.o.xwell found it difficult to breathe, while it needed a great effort to tilt more sand over the edge of the car. Up and up they sailed--four and a half, five, five and a half miles--and the sky grew more and more intensely blue till it became, at last, almost black.

Even now, at a height of twenty-nine thousand feet, when h.o.a.r-frost was forming on the sides of the balloon, and the daring travellers were stung with a cold more severe than that of the coldest winter day, the instruments went on observing the wonders of the atmosphere without themselves being observed. Mr. Glaisher, who had for some minutes found a difficulty in seeing the small marks on his instruments, lay back quite insensible against the side of the car. He had not fainted suddenly. First, he tells us, his arms refused to move when he tried to reach the various instruments. Then, as his eyes fell on Mr. c.o.xwell, who had climbed into the ring to reach the valve-rope, he tried to speak; but the power of speech was gone, and a moment later he lost all consciousness.

The balloon was still ascending, and, to Mr. c.o.xwell's horror, he found that the terrible cold had turned his hands black, and robbed them of all muscular power. His position was one of great danger, seated as he was in that slender car miles above the earth, and so numbed by the cold that he could not hold the ropes. He reached the valve-cord at last, however, and, seizing it between his teeth, gave it two or three vigorous jerks. The balloon stopped ascending. Hooking his numbed arms over the ring, he dropped safely into the car. As he did so, he noticed that the blue hand of the barometer stood perpendicular. _The balloon had ceased to climb at seven miles high!_

His efforts to restore Mr. Glaisher were soon successful, and, by the time the earth was again reached, no ill effects from the wonderful adventure were to be felt.

We must mention six other pa.s.sengers that took part in the journey: these were pigeons. One was liberated at three miles high, but dropped with wide-open wings like a sheet of paper until denser air was reached.

A second, at four miles, was evidently a stronger bird, for it flew vigorously round and round, gradually descending. A third, dropped a little higher, fell like a stone; and another, thrown out at four miles, on the way down, took a comfortable perch on the top of the balloon.

This famous flight of Messrs. c.o.xwell and Glaisher is still a record. No other balloon has ever ascended to so great a height, and, when a similar attempt was made in France by three celebrated aeronauts, two of them lost their lives at a height of five miles, owing to the rarity of the atmosphere they had to breathe.

The ill.u.s.tration of the scene in the balloon, on page 265, is copied from Mr. Glaisher's _Travels in the Air_, published by Messrs. Macmillan & Co., Ltd., who have kindly given leave for its reproduction.

JOHN LEA.