857 



and after observing that it was a well-known fact that the same 

 thoughts have struck men's minds simultaneously, although hundreds 

 of miles asunder, and led them, although acted upon by different in- 

 fluences, to identical conclusions, ended in soliciting public replies 

 to the following questions : — 



" Does the potato contain the quantity of nutritive matter I have 

 pointed out ? 



" And will not the same extent of land, cultivated at the same cost, 

 produce, on the average, at least three times the weight of dry matter, 

 or meal, from the potato, that can be produced from wheat ? 



" Does not the potato possess the same capability as wheat of 

 being converted into meal and flour, at least equally fitted for storage 

 and preservation, as food for man ? 



" Why, then, should we use it solely as a boiled vegetable ? 



" Would it be more barbarous and ungrateful now to only boil 

 wheat, and use it as our forefathers have done as ' furmety,' and then 

 say wheat should be banished the land, than to save ourselves the 

 trouble of making the potato into meal and flour for bread, that we 

 now cry out to banish it ? 



" In omitting to make ourselves aware of the real capabilities and 

 uses of the potato, do we not ignoranlly abuse a generous blessing ? 



" In a word, are the means to aid ourselves in our hands, both as 

 to the preservation and proper use of the potato, and if so, whether 

 should we use them or pray for the grant of some other blessing, to 

 be, perhaps, equally abused and forgotten ? 



Mr. Rogers, then, at the request of the chairman, stated that the 

 disease of the potato, in his opinion, had arisen from planting it in 

 the Spring in place of the Autunui ; that by doing so, the potato, 

 being placed in the pit or clamp when taken out of the ground, was 

 in a warmer atmosphere during the winter than it would be if lying 

 on the ground ; that therefore it grew or shot forth, and the growth 

 or shoots being afterwards taken off when it came to be planted in 

 spring, it followed that the offspring must be weak in proportion to 

 the extent of life which the shoot took from the tuber. That the 

 winter quarters of the last ten or twelve years have been of a tempe- 

 rature nearly equal to the spring quarters of former years ; and that 

 therefore the growth in the pit has been considerably more for the 

 last ten or twelve years than formerly ; and of course that, in propor- 

 tion as that growth in the pit increased, so must the vitality of the 

 potato be diminished, because all the shoots left behind were so 

 much of the life absolutely lost. Now, the remedy for that was, 



