HISTORICAL STATEMENT. 21 



resistance, his method being- to cross-fertilize, rear the seedling-s, and 

 expose them ruthlessly, to infection, retaining only those showing 

 some degree of resistance. In this work he received much encour- 

 agement and some financial aid through Charles Darwin. 



A committee of the English House of Commons, reporting in 1880 

 upon the potato disease, found all its witnesses concurring in the 

 necessity for the production of new varieties with increased disease 

 resistance.'^ Parliament was asked to give financial aid for experi- 

 ments aiming to produce new and disease-proof varieties, but it did 

 not do this. Earl Cathcart, in commenting on this report, states 

 that- 

 All potatoes have deteriorated in their disease-resisting powers. A variety from 

 seed takes four to six years for its establishment, and under the most favorable cir- 

 cumstances a good variety might be expected to degenerate in twenty years. The 

 production of new varieties is of national importance. 



Apparently through the influence of Cathcart, Baker ^ was led to 

 make an exhaustive comparative stud}' of the genus Solanum in order 

 to advise as to the relation of the cultivated varieties to the several 

 wild species of the American continent preparatory to breeding experi- 

 ments in which these might be used. As a result, two species were 

 considered worthy of further trial in the attempt to improve disease 

 resistance, viz, the Darwin potato, S. inaglia, from the Chonos Archi- 

 pelago, and the Uruguay potato, ^S'. commersonii. Cathcart furnished 

 Sutton with the former and he hybridized it with the common S. tuher- 

 osinn. Sutton'" reports that, beginning in 1886 — 



Although many hundreds of flowers of S. maglia were artificially fertilized with 

 pollen from cultivated varieties, only five were successful, resulting in five berries. 

 From these but two seedlings w'ere secured and only one of these showed any prom- 

 ise whatever, the second having to be grown under glass to prevent its dying. 

 * * * This hybrid, although a vast improvement on S. maglia, is far behind the 

 ordinary potato in appearance, crop, and quality. The seedling * * * grown for 

 eight years, in 1894 was slightly diseased, although previously free from attack. 



Sutton still has the jS. hiaglia and this hybrid in propagation at 

 Reading, where the writer saw them in August, 1901:. Phytophthora 

 was then more rampant on the foliage of both of these and on S. com- 

 we?'8on{(, which he also has, than on the average potato plants in his 

 fields. No h3'brids of /(S^. coiumersonn had been secured by him pre- 

 vious to this. Mr. Lasham, potato specialist for the firm, has been 

 giving renewed attention to the possibilities of species hj'bridization, 

 and showed the writer balls which he considered to contain hybrid 

 seeds of S. tuherosum X commersonii. 



«Jour. Eoy. Agr. Soc. Eng., XX: 291 (1884). 



^Baker, J. G., A Review of the Tuber-Bearing Species of Solanum. Jour. Linn. 

 Soc, London, XX, 489-507 (1883-84). 



<^Sutton, A. W., Potatoes, Jour. Roy. Hort. Soc, XIX, 387 (1896). 



