farmers' miscellany. 101 



As I do not seek to establish any favorite theory, I trust my 

 remarks may incite to observation and provoke discussion, and pro- 

 vided the practical and useful truth on this subject be discovered, 

 I do not care much whether it be by myself or by others. 



J. E. Teschemacher. 



10. Degeneracy in varieties from long cultivation. Some 

 have thought that some varieties were less subject to the disease 

 than others. A writer in the " Democrat^'' Northampton, Mass., 

 says : " We have a field of ' Mercers ' that have nearly all rotted, 

 while ' Carters ' adjoining appear r)iuch less injured.''"' But on the 

 other hand, the writer in the Amherst Express, already quoted, 

 says : " The ' Carter' potatoe is the most decayed.'''' Indeed, no 

 variety seems to have been exempt. If the disease is owing to 

 degeneracy of this kind, a very ready remedy suggests itself, viz : 

 to raise new varieties from seed. But new ones have suffered as 

 well as old. 



11. Degeneracy in varieties^ from propagating hy seed. This has 

 just been suggested by a scientific friend at my elbow, and differs 

 from No. 10. Every one at all acquainted with the laws of breed- 

 ing animals knows that too close breeding, or breeding in and in^ 

 has a tendency to produce effeminate, weakly kind. It is not only 

 so among animals, but the same is the fact in the human race. 

 This theory supposes that it holds also among plants, and that the 

 disease supervenes from the varieties having become degenerated — 

 from raising successive generations from one family by seed. 

 Another friend suggests its analogy to scrofula in man. The for- 

 mer of these, I confess, strikes me as the most probable theory I 

 have yet heard. But it is attended with difficulties like all the 

 rest. If this be the true cause, or either of them, I see no hope 

 for the potatoe, inasmuch as an unhealthy plant must extend a 

 disease resulting from such a cause to all that are raised from it 

 even by seed. We must then go back to the original stock from 

 the mountains of Chili and Peru. This I believe is the sum of the 

 prevailing theories ; and as we said before, they all leave us in 

 the dark yet, and we must expect to be there till some more sys- 

 tematic observations are made throughout the country by cultiva- 

 tors. The chemist cannot tell w^hat it is by analysis, any more 

 than he could detect the cause of the small pox by analysing the 

 body of a man that has died with it. Intelligent, observing far- 



