58 TRANSACTIONS OF THE 



contain both sexual organs perfectly developed. The Duchesse d'Angou- 

 lerae pear and Hovey's strawberries are examples. 2. The flowers of 

 highly developed fruits or those fruits which are nearly perfect in their 

 kind, are the most imperfect in their blooms, and exhibit fewest fertile 

 blooms. The rationale of these laws exhibit their infinite wisdom. If 

 every blossom of a tree were fertile, there could be no large fruit, as the 

 nutriment would be distributed to too large a number of fruits. 



THE POTATO QUESTION. 



Solon Robinson read a letter from Ghent, N. Y., which states that the 

 writer, Cornelius J. Hogeboom, had twice tried the experiment of planting 

 large and medium potatoes, with a result very decidedly in favor of the 

 large tubers. He also tried very small ones. The yield of the crop from 

 the large seed was one-eighth better than the medium size, and the medium 

 one fifth better than from the small ones, the product of the latter being 

 like the seed in size, and few in the hill. He thinks with more care in 

 selecting seed there would be less potato rot. 



Thos. W. Field. — It is my opinion that much of the disease of potatoes 

 comes from the unripe condition of the tubers when affected by sadden 

 change in the weather. The great error in the discussion of the potatoe 

 rot is the assumption of the position that rot is a specific disease ; while 

 rot is but the decomposition of the tuber after its death, and may be the 

 result of many diseases. Thus, rot of the potato was in 1857, produced 

 after eight or ten days of hot, rainy weather, during which a succulent 

 growth was produced, which was so immature as to loose their leaves under 

 the heat of the unclouded sun, and the uuripened tubers rotted. 



Mr. Lawton. — I cannot fiind from all accounts that I have read that there 

 is any theory to account for the potato disease. It is an inscrutable 

 disease, the course of which has not been discovered, and hence no remedy 

 is applicable, and discussion of the question nearly useless. Who can tell 

 what has blighted the sycamore all over the country ? Perhaps it is owing 

 to the winter, as was at first thought, but no one knows. 



Mr. Meigs said that in every country where potatoes are grown, the rot 

 has destroyed more or less of them in a field — seldom the whole — seldom 

 all in the same row — but some everywhere, on every land, high or low, wet 

 or dry. There being always some excepted, we must search out the cause 

 of this. As in Asiatic cholera, like exceptions are by millions — so even 

 in small pox some persons cannot be infected. Now God has given to man 

 a powerful reason with which he investigates every question. After men 

 were destroyed by millions by the vsnereal disease, it was suddenly cured 

 by Paracelsus, about 300 years ago, to the amazement of all the learned 

 faculty of that day. He used mercury, for the first time since creation. 



Again, after centuries of terrible devastation of human life by small 

 pox, and no cure or prevention, so from Constantinople Lady Mary Wort- 

 ley Montague, wife of the British ambassador, became satisfied of the 

 comparative safety of inoculation. She inoculated her son of six years old, 



