46 The Potatoe Plague. 



whole family, however plausible or natural such deduction 

 may be, is certainly not the way in which scientific knowledge 

 has been brought to its present degree of perfection. Be- 

 cause a certain mode of treatment has proved beneficial to a 

 lymphatic inhabitant of the arctic circle, in a particular dis- 

 ease, does it follow that the same mode would produce the 

 same result on a sanguine or bilious temperament between the 

 tropics ? Does it follow that the same laws and government 

 to which New England quietly submits would be fitting for 

 the island of Hayti, or one of the pseudo South American 

 Republics ? Yet this is the process of reasoning and induc- 

 tion that has been applied almost universally to the culture of 

 the potatoe. 



One writer has tried one or two varieties of the root in 

 certain soils and situations ; he has applied certain manures 

 and a particular treatment of his own, and he therefore 

 argues that what has succeeded or failed with his variety will 

 be equally successful or otherwise, with the whole potatoe 

 family. This is, to the multitude, very plausible and com- 

 fortable doctrine ; they adopt it, and suffer, because they 

 have not discovered that the coat that fits a tall, thin man, 

 will not fit a short, thick one, of equal weight. 



"We sometimes find, in investigating the reports of scientific 

 men, that the same variety, planted and dug at the same 

 season, from the same soil, and having received the same 

 treatment, in short, as far as human sagacity can discern, 

 having had precisely the same advantages and disadvantages, 

 has shown very different results. In one field, the crop is 

 healthy and abundant ; in another, it is scant, defective and 

 diseased. The reader will find many instances of this kind 

 by referring to the -report of the Commissioner of Patents to 

 the twenty-eighth Congress. What, then, is the inference ? 

 Clearly that the disease is owing to some cause independent 

 of culture, or soil, or weather, or atmospheric influence ; that, 



