large quantities of Potatoes, which were sound when taken 

 up, rotted in the pits. I believe that the wider extent of 

 the destruction of this year is owing to the circumstance of the 

 season having been one of the wettest and coldest ever 

 known, and therefore one of the most unfavourable to 

 vegetation of all kinds, except that of mere green herbage. 



With one short interval, we have had a prevalence 

 of rain during the whole season, and on the nights 

 of the 23d and 24th of September, the frost was so 

 severe in many parts of England and Ireland as to 

 kill the tops of the Potato, and thus to put a sudden 

 stop to their growth. A more unfavourable season 

 for the growth of the Potato than the present cannot be 

 conceived, and there is not the slightest reason to wonder 

 that the continued cold and wet, and the sudden checks 

 given to the plant in the vigour of its growth, should have 

 left it in a very feeble state, and even^have destroyed its 

 tubers, on wet or partially drained lands. 



At the same time, however, that I believe the unfa- 

 vourable weather of the present season to have been one 

 principal cause of the existing disease of the Potato Crop, 

 I feel strongly persuaded that it is not the only one, and 

 though T entertain confident hopes that the disease will be 

 much less next year, if the season should be better, and if 

 it should be found possible to preserve the .seed in a healthy 

 state until next spring, I yet fear that the cultivation of the 

 Potato will never be free from serious casualties, unless much 

 greater pains are taken than at present in raising and 

 obtaining from the native country of the Potato new 

 varieties to supply the place of those which are wearing out, 

 in storing the seed with greater care during the winter 

 months, and, above all, in more thoroughly draining all 

 lands on which the Potato is grown. 



The object of the present culture of the Potato in Europe 

 is to improve the tuber as much as possible, both in size 

 and quality; and the effect of that culture has been to 

 increase that part of the plant to eight or ten times its origi- 

 nal size. The consequence of this has been to throw the 

 greater part of the strength of the plant into the tubers ; in 

 many instances to reduce the leaves and stems to less than 

 Iiidf the size of the wild Potato described by Mr. Darwin; 

 and in some to prevent the formation of potato apples, which 

 are the proper seed of the plant. In the fine mealy Potato, 

 so well known in Lancashire as the pink eye, and which the 

 late Mr. Loudon described as the best Potato ever eaten by 

 him, the foliage has become so small that it has for several 



