QON after 1580, Spanish soldiers brought potatoes, indigenous to the uplands of Peru, to Europe. From Spain potato culture spread rapidly to Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and France. Potatoes, tubers of Solanum TIuberosum, did not reach the United States until 1719, when a group of Irish immigrants who settled in Londonderry, New Hampshire, brought them. From the eastern seaboard potato production spread gradually westward in the various territories, being brought to Minnesota by missionaries and soldiers who planted them in small garden plots outside the stockade walls. Early records show the production areas of Minnesota to have been confined principally to the southern 1)ortion of the state following closely the location of rural population. Census reports for 1860 indicate a well-defined concentration of potato production in Blue Earth County, which, however, has been attributed to errors in the report as there are no indications of intensive cultivation of this crop before or after or even in adjacent counties. By 1870 we find a more even distribution throughout the southernmost part of the state with more than 10,000 bushels produced in Wilkin County on the west central boundary. Der-inite concentration into the present major production areas began in the Sandlancd area north of the Twin Cities according to the census of 1880, with this region expanding considerably by 1 890. Th'lle introduction of new miiachiinery ind an increase in market prices resulted in an increase of 38.5 per cent in the number of acres planted between 1890 and 1900. In 1910 two districts of production dominated; the larger region included Hiennepin, Ramsey, Anoka, Isanti, Chisago, and Washiington counties in the east central part of the state, and the smaller included Clay, Norman, and Polk counties in the northwest (Figures 1 and 2).