The Potato Disease. 507 



as some otlier parts, bids fair to convert, by virtue of its 

 hardier and more fruitful stock, the New Enghmd of our 

 ancestors into a New Ireland of no distant day. 



For many years, while the potato disease was committing 

 its severest ravages, little was known witli certainty of its 

 character or cause. Many theories, to which attached more 

 or less plausibility, were advanced to account for it ; and a 

 long war of words was maintained between those who 

 strove to establish or disprove them. Because the decay- 

 ing tissues of the affected plants oifered to many micro- 

 scopic forms of animal life an acceptable nidus, and such 

 were found therein, it was believed by many that these 

 infusoria were the cause of the malady. Because the dis- 

 ease raged worst under certain conditions of the weather, 

 others held its orio-in to be meteoric or electrical. If the 

 causes assigned for the rot were various, the remedies tried 

 by farmers, or suggested by scientific men, were manifold. 

 Ignorant of the true nature of the disease, men groped in 

 darkness for its cure, and tried everything. Liberal rewards 

 were offered for effectual antidotes, were claimed by men 

 who had devised nostrums, but were never awarded. Cer- 

 tain palliatives to a greater or less degree were well proven 

 under .all this experiment it is true ; and the methods of 

 culture for the potato crop were somewhat modified to 

 advantage. 



In the course of time the fungologists directed their 

 microscopes upon diseased potato plants ; and discovering 

 the veiy first indications of the disease in the brown spots 

 on tlie leaves and stems to consist of a fungus within and 

 upon the tissues of the potato plant, and of the corrosive 



