Sir Joseph Banks, the well-known naturalist, and President of the Royal Society from 1777 till his death in 1820, was at great pains to collect the history of the introduction of the potato into these countries.  His account is, that Raleigh’s expedition, granted to him under patent “to discover such remote heathen and barbarous lands, not yet actually possessed by any Christian prince, nor inhabited by Christian people, as to him shall seem good,” brought home the potato of Virginia.  This Charter bears date 25th March, 1584, and was a new and more extensive one than the first granted to him, which was in June, 1578.  With this expedition sailed one Thomas Heriot, called the Mathematician, who was probably sent out to examine and report upon the natural history of such countries as they might discover.  He wrote an account of Virginia, and of the products of its soil, which is printed in the first volume of De Bry’s collection of Voyages.  Under the article “Roots,” he describes a plant which he calls Opanawk.  “These roots,” he says, “are round, some as large as a walnut, others much larger; they grow in damp soil, many hanging together as if fixed with ropes.  They are good food either boiled or roasted.”  This must strike anyone as a very accurate description of the potato.  Gerarde, in his Herbal, published in 1597, gives a figure of the potato under the name of the potato of Virginia.  He asserts that he received the roots from that country, and that they were denominated Naremberga.

Raleigh’s expedition, which seems to have been already prepared, sailed in April, and having taken possession of that portion of America which was afterwards named Virginia, in honour of Queen Elizabeth, and by her own express desire, returned to England about the middle of September of the same year.  Although, as already stated, in all likelihood the potato of Virginia was introduced into England and Ireland by that expedition, Sir Joseph Banks was of opinion that the root had come to Europe earlier.  His reasons for thinking so are:  1.  Clusius, otherwise L’Ecluse, the great botanist, when residing in Vienna, in 1598, received the potato from the Governor of Mons, in Hainault, who had obtained it the year before from one of the attendants of the Pope’s Legate under the name of Taratoufle,[4] and learned from him that in Italy, where it was then in use, no person knew whether it came from Spain or America.  From this we may conclude that the root was in Italy before it was brought to England; for this conversation happened only three years after the sailing of the expedition of 1584.  It is further very probable that the root found its way from Spain into Italy, as those parts of America, where the potato was indigenous, were then subject to Spain. 2.  Peter Cicca, in his Chronicle of 1553, says, the inhabitants of Quito and its vicinity have, besides mays (maize), a tuberous root which they eat and call papas; which Clusius with much probability guesses to be the same sort of plant that he received from the Governor of Mons.