344 



applied to all those countries. But, on the other hand, it must be 

 stated that the ciyptogamic parasites are identical in all countries and 

 situations. 



If newspaper reports may be relied on, it is stated that the same 

 disease destroyed the crops in New Brunswick and some parts of 

 Canada last year. Admitting this statement to be correct, much light 

 would be thrown on the question of the exciting cause of the murrain, 

 if it was ascertained if the season last year, in those provinces, was fine, 

 or cold and wet, like the present summer in Europe. If it turns out 

 that the summer of last year in those parts of America was dry and 

 genial, of course the opinion I have expressed will be scarcely tenable, 

 and that explanation which attributes the disease to the destructive 

 ravages of fungi must, I presume, be accepted. 



So much has been written upon the best method of turning the dis- 

 eased potatoes to account, that I need not refer to the subject at any 

 length. I find that up to this day, all my specimens of diseased tu- 

 bers which are kept in a dry place, remain in sfaht, quo, and do not 

 pass into moist decay. I therefore strongly recommend, as many other 

 writers have done, that they should be washed clean as soon as dug 

 up, and immediately dried, either in a kiln or in a room with a large 

 fire in it. Those which are very bad should at once be crushed, and 

 the flour extracted, and the remainder, if kept perfectly dry, would 

 keep during the winter, and might be used, when boiled with a little 

 salt, as food for pigs, &c. I have no doubt this will be found in the 

 long run more profitable to the farmer than making flour from them, 

 which will not prove a very acceptable article of diet, and if not care- 

 fully separated from all the diseased matter during the process of ma- 

 nufacture, will likewise, I am afraid, not be very wholesome. 



Henry Oxley Stephens. 



78, Old Michael Street, Bristol, 

 October 2, 1845. 



[At page 1 11 of the 'Transactions of the Microscopical Society' 

 will be found a paper by Mr. Hassall, entitled, "An explanation of the 

 cause of the rapid Decay of many Fruits," in which the agent of 

 decay is shown to be a minute fungus. In connexion with the pre- 

 sent engrossing subject of the failure of the potato crop, and appa- 

 rently from a similar cause, Mr. Hassall's observations will be found 

 highly interesting. — E. Newman.'] 



