614 



gus" on the stems or leaves. But about the thirteenth of August, 

 the gardener forked over the ground from which T had taken the po- 

 tatoes, in order to sow turnips, and he found one potato which had 

 been left in the ground, and that one was infected, as my cook said, 

 and I can trust her eyes, exactly like the diseased potatoes of last 

 year. Being from home that day I did not see it, nor hear about it 

 until lost or thrown away by the gardener, who had cut it across to 

 show its condition to the cook. The gardener has now been digging 

 up potatoes daily for a week past, and has not found another diseased 

 example. He also has scratched here and there among the later va- 

 rieties, and finds no bad potatoes. 



Last year, by this time, the disease had probably attacked a fourth 

 or a third of the tubers of the same varieties. Is it not somewhat 

 curious that the only potato found left in the ground should have be- 

 come infected, and yet none of those attached to the roots or shoots of 

 the living plants should be so affected ? 



I regret, however, to say that this immunity of my own garden 

 from the pest, is no criterion of the condition of the fields and gar- 

 dens of my neighbours ; many of them being very seriously infested 

 and damaged already. One instance was narrated to me, of a farmer 

 offering to sell four acres of potatoes for a sovereign. I was watch- 

 ful not to allow any diseased tubers to be planted. The potatoes 

 hitherto got up for domestic use were planted in dry and loose earth ; 

 but some of the later crops, where the gardener's scratchings have 

 failed to detect disease, are in stiff, loamy soil, which would grow 

 wheat well, and did so within a dozen years. 



Before the rains of August set in, I could hear of no bad potatoes 

 in this neighbourhood. With us, the dry weather lasted until the 

 day of the storm in London, on the 1st of August, when we had heavy 

 rains, interspersed with some few large hailstones. During June and 

 July we had very little rain ; and, as I remember, only on one day 

 was the ground wet by rain to the depth of two inches. 



Hewett C. Watson. 



Thames Ditton, August 20, 1846. 



