THE POTATO, ITS CONDITION IN 1847. 23 



patches occurred in the rows : that upon investigation it was seen 

 that the sets planted had either disappeared, or were reduced to 

 a mass of putridity. But no complaint of spot, or decay of the 

 herbage and stems, or of any peculiar smell of decomposing 

 vegetable matter, was made till the epidemic of 1845 was 

 established. 



2nd. The crop of 1846, though to a very alarming extent 

 affected, was reduced more by drought than by disease. They 

 who planted for themselves and waited the results, must be 

 aware that, as from the 20th of May to the 22nd of June, no rain 

 fell, and that a blazing sun, rarely obscured by a cloud, had 

 poured its fiery beams upon the surface of the ground, daily, for 

 about 14 hours, vegetation must have been fatally checked. 



Young tubers were produced, and brought to precocious 

 maturity — some showers came at midsummer, and stimulated 

 these tubers — a second progeny was developed ; and thus, as in 

 every similar case, both became valueless : I dug up my early 

 and second early varieties from ground dry as dust ; the lime 

 that I had placed about the sets at planting remaining white and 

 powdery as when deposited ; the produce was two and three little 

 potatoes to a set, not in the whole averaging three times the 

 weight of the seed. Disease there then was none ; but as the 

 season of vegetation had thus been lost, the entire stock was re- 

 duced far below par : I record this fact with the sole view of 

 correcting a mistake which prevailed at the time of digging, and 

 to prove the consolatory truth that disease had not existed in a 

 more aggravated form than it did in 1845 ; but that, on the 

 contrary, its virulence had abated. In a word, had tliere not 

 been one diseased leaf in the land, the produce of 1846, as a 

 whole, could not have amounted to the half of an average crop ! 



Every circumstance of this singular visitation admitted, how- 

 ever, of some exception ; and therefore the last observation must 

 be received as applying chiefly to the South, where drought 

 prevailed. Scotland had more rain, and there the disease proved 

 more malignant than in 1845. There is also reason to believe 

 that it travelled progressively ; leaving, or becoming milder in, 

 one locality, and visiting another ; thus in some degree re- 

 sembling the advances of the Asiatic cholera. 



I now come to the present year 1847; in which, though un- 

 questionably there have arisen from time to time threatening 

 symptoms (very partial and arbitrary), yet they have assumed 

 a new form and type. Thus we were told of the cracking or 

 abrasion of the cuticle* underground, with discoloration of the 

 parts from which the tuber-bearing processes proceed. Some 

 of these I saw, and attached to one of them was a minute tuber, 

 which appeared slightly affected. I was called to inspect a 



