The Potato Disease. 505 



MISCELLANEOUS SUBJECTS. 



THE POTATO DISEASE. 



BY C. G. PRINGLE, OF CHARLOTTE. 



Certain microscopic plants, apparently insignificant irom 

 their exceeding minuteness, preying upon some article ot* 

 human food, or blighting some staple commodity, have influ- 

 enced the character and destiny of nations. Thus the vine 

 disease, Vidium TucJceri, first detected in English vineries 

 in 1847, subsequently devastated the vineyards of all South- 

 ern and Western Europe, cutting off the principal revenues 

 of many districts, and reducing their population to a condi- 

 tion of want. By greatly reducing the amount of pure 

 ■ wines in commerce, it caused the substitution for these of 

 artificial compounds, burning with alcohol, and caustic with 

 chemical ingredients, — liquors which have begotten a new 

 and more baneful type of intemperance, and have entailed 

 upon civilized nations the curse of delirium tremens. 



Another fungus, Botrytis JBassiana, caused the muscar- 

 dine, a disease which for twenty years spread ruin through 

 the silk-worm nurseries, causing inestimable loss, and affect- 



