24 THE POTATO, ITS CONDITION IN 1847. 



five-acre plot in a field at Waddon Marsh, where some of the 

 leaves began to look yellow and drooping; this was about the 

 10th of June. Not one spot, or any other symptom, above or 

 below the soil, could be detected ; but it was remembered that 

 a partial hoar-frost had been observed on the seventh morning 

 after that singularly piercing cold day of the 6th ; and thus the 

 effects observed were fully accounted for. I repeated my obser- 

 vations after several intervals ; the plants grew well and pros- 

 pered ; so that during July the owner sold tiie potatoes for 251. 

 per acre; they were the early Shaw's. Everywhere about 

 Croydon, and many miles around, potatoes had been planted: I 

 examined every plot in field or garden tliat I could approach, 

 and made all possible inquiries where I could not inspect. 

 Market and gentlemen's gai'deners, salesmen, farmers, all were 

 in one tale ; their evidence was consentient ; and this was borne 

 out by the products, speedily and abundantly brought to the 

 shops, By letters from Gloucestershire and Hertfordshire I was 

 informed that the potatoes were " rotting in the ground ;" that 

 a curl of the leaf indicated a certain destruction of the lower 

 stem, which existed to a very threatening extent. After a few 

 weeks these parties, my correspondents, wrote again to say ; one 

 — that the potatoes " were doing well ;" the other — that there 

 was much amendment, and that the attack was only partial ! 

 At the present time (the l5th of August being past) I have found 

 no reason to alter the opinion which I had long formed of the 

 gradual but certain abatement of the malady. A gentleman 

 called on the above-named day ; he had just returned from 

 Germany and Russia : in those countries there is abundance 

 — no thought or fear of disease remains ; in a word, general fer- 

 tility, particularly in fruit, is manifest to an extraordinary extent. 

 These truths induce me, while I disclaim any assumption of 

 knowledge, to offer the following suggestions, to which f would 

 premise an earnest recommendation that every gardener do atten- 

 tively peruse the two essays on the potato — its disease, cure, and 

 treatment, by Mr. Jasper Rogers of Dublin ; for although the 

 exceedingly wide diff'usion of the disease in the years 1845-6 

 may excite some doubt of the validity of arguments which apply 

 to local treatment, yet so unquestionable are the truths he ap- 

 peals to, that if some perplexity remain, we cannot fail to profit 

 by duly attending to his advice. 



Disease, or rather debility, the result of disease, still exists ; 

 and though, as we have j^roved, diseased tubers have produced 

 strong plants, yet, as the Prize Essay in a late number of the 

 Royal Agricultural .Journal demonstrably showed, tlie propaga- 

 tion by tainted seed must contribute to tlie maintenance of a 

 diseased condition. That millions of tubers more or less in- 



