The Potatoe Plague. 45 



our own country are the complaints of entire failure or partial 

 destruction heard, .but the voice of lamentation and the fear 

 of famine come to us with a foreboding moan from the British 

 isles, and some of the countries of continental Europe. The 

 rot this year has been universal in its effects, and the exi- 

 gency has called forth particular and anxious inquiries into 

 the nature t>f the disease, accounts of which, and the re- 

 sults arrived at, are subjoined. 



It would, perhaps, be difficult to name a subject on which 

 more has been written, or which has engaged the attention of 

 more able men than the prevalent potatoe blight, rot, or by 

 whatever name it may be called. The plague and the yellow 

 fever have not been more anxiously discussed ; nor can it be 

 denied that the subject is of almost equal importance. A 

 calamity that involves the destruction of a great portion of 

 the food and labor of the civilized world,, and reduces millions 

 of fellow-creatures to literal starvation, cannot be too dili- 

 gently studied ; if, happily, thereby, the evil may be averted, 

 checked, or in any considerable degree lessened. It is esti- 

 mated by those more competent to form an estimate than I 

 can pretend to be, that-three fourths, at least, of the potatoe 

 crop of all Ireland will have been lost the present season. 

 Supposing that the potatoe is the principal food of only four 

 of the millions of that wretched country, what an amount of 

 human suffering does the prospect present. 



I find, by a careful comparison of much that has been writ- 

 ten on this interesting topic, that most of those who have 

 made it a subject of inquiry, have fallen into the common 

 error of generalizing too much, of deducing the rule from the 

 particular instance, instead of tracing wherein the instance 

 has coincided with, or deviated from, the rule. Now, there 

 are countless varieties of the potatoe, and to suppose that the 

 treatment which has succeeded with one, or two, or a dozen 

 of these, is the one only means to be used with regard to the 



