young plant in the early part of its growth. The mischief 

 done by carelessness in this respect is incalculable. 



But neither these nor any other means will prevent the 

 evil so long as the land remains so imperfectly drained as 

 it is at present. One chief cause of the failure of this crop, 

 both in the British Islands and on the Continent, I believe 

 to be the want of efficient drainage, greatly aggravated this 

 season, by excessive and unusually wet and cold weather. 

 In ordinary seasons draining is not so essential on the 

 Continent as it is in England, Scotland, and Ireland, owing 

 to the comparative dryness of the climate; but this year the 

 North of France, the Netherlands, Germany, and Poland, 

 have been as heavily deluged with rain as the British Islands ; 

 and as their natural drainage from streams and rivers is less 

 rapid than ours, and their artificial drainage greatly inferior 

 to it, except in some small districts of Holland and Flan- 

 ders, the Potato Crops on the Continent have been more 

 weakened by the excessive wetness and coldness of the 

 season than ours, and the destruction has been more com- 

 plete. In the British Islands, the drainage, though still 

 miserably deficient, is superior to that of the greater part 

 of the Continent, and in some cases it is perfect, the drains 

 being sufficient for their great purpose of causing the rain 

 as it falls, and the waters of the springs as they rise, to flow 

 away immediately, without ever remaining to chill and sod- 

 den the ground. Without asserting that the circumstance 

 of land being thus drained will, in every instance, have 

 saved the crop, I confidently state that it has done it in 

 many. On the three farms with which I am connected, 

 which have been so thoroughly drained for many years that 

 water is never seen to remain upon them in the wettest 

 weather, upwards of forty acres of Potatoes have been grown 

 this year with perfect success. They are all quite sound, 

 with the exception of three drill", grown in a natural hollow 

 in the middle of one field. This we have never yet suc- 

 ceeded in laying quite dry. Before it was broken up there 

 was a liue of rushes along the hollow, though there was not 

 another rush to be found in the field, and ahout the first 

 week in September, this year, the tops of these three drills 

 withered away, although on both sides of them, and 

 throughout the whole of the fourteen acres of which the field 

 consists, there was not another spot where the tops of the 

 Potatoes did not continue to grow, in the most luxuriant 

 manner, until the night of the 23d September, when they 

 were cut clown by the frost, along with the tops of nearly 

 the whole of the Potatoes then growing in South Lanca- 



