394 



NATURE 



[November 24, 192 1 



doubling- this area and making some increase in 

 pigs we could do without any importation of 

 wheat. 



There is much to be said in favour of a potato 

 and pig programme in war, as German experi- 

 ence proves. We ourselves did everything pos- 

 sible to increase the potato area during the war, 

 and though Lord Bledisloe suggests that we vacil- 

 lated in the matter of pigs, this was inevitable. 

 Every belligerent European nation vacillated in its 

 pig policy, the Germans included. This class of 

 live stock requires extraordinarily close watching ; 

 it easily becomes a danger, and in some stages 

 of the war it may be questioned if there was any 

 animal in Europe that served the Allied cause 

 better than the German pig. The management of 

 swine led to violent controversies between the 

 agrarian and the urban population ; eventually a 

 pig holocaust was necessary to save the lives of 

 the unfortunate city dwellers. German experience, 

 indeed, does not wholly support Lord Bledisloe's 

 proposition, for even their enormous potato crop 

 — which before the war was three or four times 

 greater than was necessary for human use — played 

 them false. The storage and transport difficulties 

 were immense, there were great losses from frost, 

 and we cannot have forgotten the tales of woe 

 caused by the indigestible kohlrabis which were 

 used to supplement the scanty potato supply. 

 Potatoes may be productive and highly valuable to 

 nations at war, but no crop is more difficult to 

 deal with ; the echoes of the German Food Con- 

 troller's language, when he discussed his potato 

 problems in public, reached us here ; and attentive 

 listeners might have, discovered that the perplexi- 

 ties presented by the potato excited even our own 

 Food Controllers ! 



In the course of a great war it might be pos- 

 sible to stimulate potato cultivation to an extent 

 that would reduce corn imports by 25 or 30 per 

 cent., but to achieve the results proposed by Lord 

 Bledisloe it would be necessary to follow the 

 German example and in peace time learn to culti- 

 vate and use three or four times as large a quan- 

 tity as our markets now call for. But it is certain 

 that the farmer would find potato growing for 

 such industries as distilling or starch making very 

 much less profitable than corn growing. Pig 

 feeding would pay better than alcohol or farina, 

 but when the human consumer can barely afford 

 the price necessary to maintain the existing acre- 

 age, what prospect is there of a threefold exten- 

 sion of potato growing for pigs? 



The present position suggests a decrease rather 

 NO. 2717, VOL. 108] 



than an increase in the area of potatoes grown for 

 market. Since the Armistice a change has come 

 over the prospects of the crop. The great rise in 

 the cost of transport and of fuel makes this food- 

 stuff no longer cheap to the urban consumer. In 

 London potatoes are now being sold retail at from 

 IS. gd. to 35. per 14 lb. At 2s. the cost of energy 

 would be about 225 Calories per penny ; in the 

 4-lb. loaf at lod. energy can be bought at about 

 400 Calories per penny, and potatoes must be 

 cooked. There has therefore been a decline in 

 consumption. The large drop in the percentage 

 of the retail price of potatoes and other vegetables 

 now received by the farmer, because of the in- 

 crease in transport and marketing costs, is a seri- 

 ous matter for the consumer, as well as for the 

 farmer. It means that the market demand has 

 become much less effective than formerly in pro- 

 viding a supply. Until we can greatly reduce the 

 cost of bringing the potato from the farm to the 

 urban consumer the prospect of increasing the 

 area under potatoes as desired by Lord Bledisloe 

 is not encouraging. 



Pigs form a more hopeful subject ; there is great 

 scope for their increase in peace time. Their 

 place in war is less certain. In any long war we 

 should probably have to ask ourselves whether fat 

 pigs could be allowed to exist alongside a nation 

 of lean people. There would always be advocates 

 for both, but ultimately, as in Germany, the lean 

 people would prevail. 



Priestley in America. 



Priestley in America, 1794-1804. By Prof. 

 Edgar F. Smith. Pp. v + 173. (Philadelphia: 

 P. Blakiston's Son and Co., 1920.) 1.50 dollars 

 net. 



PROF. EDGAR SMITH, of the University of 

 Pennsylvania, in studying the lives of early 

 American chemists, naturally encountered the 

 name of Priestley, who, as is well known, left 

 this country for America in 1794. The odium 

 and insult he had met with as a Dissenter culmi- 

 nated in the Birmingham Riots of 1791, when, to 

 the cry of "Church and King," his house was 

 wrecked and set on fire "with the most savage 

 and determined fury," and the books and appara- 

 tus which it had been the business of his life to 

 collect and use were utterly destroyed. What 

 Pitt termed " the effervescence of the. public 

 mind " was kept alive by the implacable resent- 

 ment of the great body of the clergy of the Estab- 

 lished Church, aided by the speeches in Parliament 



