48 The Potatoe Plague. 



I have said that many theories have been broached in 

 regard to the supposed potatoe epidemic. Most of them are 

 entitled to respect, as the results of the laborious investiga- 

 tions of ingenious, learned, or practical men ; and I shall 

 therefore briefly notice a few of them, with such comments 

 as they appear to me to require. 



The first of these theories attributes the rot to too early or 

 too late planting and digging. There is no doubt, in niy 

 mind, that either of these causes will injuriously affect a crop ; 

 the failure on a field, or a farm, may justly be referred to 

 either or both of them. It needs no ghost to tell me that 

 green fruit is unwholesome, or that, if allowed to hang too 

 long on the tree, it will rot ; but these causes are altogether 

 insufficient to account for a decay extending over all Christen- 

 dom, of many years duration, and of continually increasing 

 progress. It cannot be that all, or even a great portion of 

 those interested in the cultivation of the potatoe throughout 

 the world, plant too late or too early, or fail to gather and 

 store the harvest in its season. This theory will do, there- 

 fore, for a district, but not for the whole temperate zone. 



The same reasoning will hold good of the effects of soils, 

 manures, and seasons. These have their influences; they 

 are partial and local ; but any considerable and general fail- 

 ure may be prevented by care. It is hardly credible that 

 they, or any of them, should, for a long series of years, exert 

 the same baleful influence, every where. Besides, if this 

 were the case, would this influence be confined to the potatoe 

 alone, of all the vegetable kingdom ? Do we hear of any 

 epidemic or general disease of any other vegetable ? "We do, 

 indeed, hear, now and then, of a failure of the beet crop, or 

 the crop of apples, here and there ; but the next year makes 

 all right again, and if fruit fails in New England, we get it 

 from New York and Jersey. The world is not an Egypt, 



