An explanation has appeared this week of a phenomenon which
has often puzzled us. livery one knows that, like the secondary • rainbow which gives a reversed image of the primary, there occurs about this season of the year a phantasmal new potato, which in external show mimics the new potato admirably, except that it is fainter '(less yellow) in colour, and quite the reverse of it in flavour,—pasty, with a taste like an exhapated constitution. It seems that this phenomenon is really due to a spurious anticipa- tion of nature by renovators of old potatos, who put them through a process to make them look like new. It appears that these manu- facturers in Paris pick out carefully the smallest old potatoes that can be obtained, put them into tuba half full of water, and then churn them with their bare feet,—as the grapes used to be pressed in the wine-vats,—by stamping upon them till the dark skins are rubbed off, and they have obtained the satin-like surface of new potatos. They are then dried and wrapped in paper, and sold in small baskets for five francs the basket. These ingenious persons are called rafistoleurs de pommes de terre, and make no secret of their process, plying it ie public by the Seine ; and we suppose there are similar persons in London, as the spurious new potato is common enough here, and curiously nasty,—we suppose because by suggesting real new potatos to the eye, they get themselves tried by a higher ideal of taste than those superannuated roots which do not put forth any false pretences.
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