013 



Gardener. — "Yes, T recollect that." 



E. N. — " Leave the potatoes alone for a fortnight, dig them at the 

 usual time, and I'll buy the whole lot if there's any disease amongst 

 them." 



This man told me eighteen days afterwards that he had housed his 

 ash-leaved kidneys in a better state, and that they had afforded a 

 better yield than during any year since this variety was introduced. 



Here was a practical man, a good gardener, yielding his judgment, 

 foregoing the teachings of twenty years' experience in favour of the 

 crude vapouring of Messrs. Westwood and Verysoft. It is difficult 

 to find words by which to characterize the folly of such people : it is 

 almost enough to make one question the advantage of the printing- 

 press, seeing it circulates such trash over every part of the habitable 

 globe. There are hundreds of people who, like this gardener, are 

 willing to abandon, on an instantaneous summons, their knowledge, 

 their judgment, their common sense, because one or other of these 

 scribes is pleased, in his very ignorance, to issue to the world hypo- 

 theses and recommendations which he has never taken the trouble 

 either to examine or test. 



The distracted gardeners who read the newspapers over their eve- 

 ning ale, have made a sad onslaught on the poor ash-leaved kidneys 

 this year, on account of the curling leaves, a character by which the 

 variety is especially to be distinguished, a character well known to 

 themselves, and one which three years ago they would have recog- 

 nized as a virtue rather than a fault. The late frosts of Maj' were 

 also fatal to many patches of potatoes, the poor gardeners resolutely 

 destroying them in consequence of the blackened leaves. But as to 

 that disease which committed such ravages in 1839, and again in 

 1845 and 1846, I am unable to trace a single instance of its recur- 

 rence in 1847 : I have received letters from all parts of the country 

 from those most capable of giving correct information ; and the re- 

 plies invariably inform me that the potato crop never promised a 

 more abundant harvest. These reports embrace England, Ireland 

 and Scotland. It will perhaps be recollected that last year the ear- 

 liest positive information of disease was published on the 14th of 

 July ; on the first of August, the day of the great hailstorm in Lon- 

 don, the papers were teeming with melancholy and doubtless exag- 

 gerated accounts of the progress of the disease; and on the 11th of 

 August the crop was pronounced a complete failure. How far the 

 report was coiTect we have had subsequent means of judging. 



I think it worthy of remark also that the early varieties of potato, 



