302 



The Potatoe Prohlem. 



Vol. XII. 



of all cultivated crops, including fruits, shrub 

 bery, and flowers; the best seeds, mode of 

 planting, cultivating, gathering, and prepar 

 ing for markets; the general principles of 

 vegetation and the laws of vegetable life. It 

 describes the principles of mechanics as ap- 

 plied to machinery used by farmers and plant- 

 ers; the best machinery and implements for 

 agriculture, their uses and the particular su- 

 periority of some over others, and their adapt- 

 edness for particular purposes. It gives the 

 latest improvements in those implements 

 which may have been made, and suggests 

 others; tells where they are to be found and 

 the benefits that will follow from their use. 

 It specifies new objects of cultivation, and 

 how they may be better prepared for a pro- 

 fitable market and more general use. 



This is the great design and scope of the 

 Agriculturist; and these are the paramount 

 objects of interest throughout America. No 

 country can ever enjoy solid prosperity un- 

 less an enlightened system of agriculture is 

 practised among its people, and this cannot 

 be done except by the aid of those works 

 which are written to teach it. Let all aid, 

 then, to spread them broadcast throughout 

 the land. It is the duty of every good citi- 

 zen to do this — nothing equal to it can be 

 done to benefit the country. 



All editors inserting the above, and for- 

 warding the paper containing it to the pub- 

 lisher, will be entitled to the Agriculturist 

 the current year, without further charge. — 

 American As[ricuUurist. 



The Potatoe Problem. 



The solution of the Potatoe Problem is 

 accoftiplished. At least. Professor Liebig 

 thinks so. In his last work* he declares 

 that the potatoes are attacked with influ- 

 enza. "The cause of the disease is the 

 game which, in spring and autumn, excites 

 influenza; that is, the disease is the efl'ect 

 of the temperature and hygrometric state of 

 the atmosphere, by which, in consequence of 

 the disturbance of the normal transpiration, 

 a check is suddenly, or for a considerable 

 time, given to the motion of the fluids, which 

 is one chief condition of life, and which thus 

 becomes insufficient for the purposes of health, 

 or even hurtful to the individual." 



To say that the potatoe crop has caught 

 cold, is new. But when we read in the 

 same place thit the cause of the cold, or in- 

 fluenza, is impeded perspiration or "sup- 

 pressed transpiration," the novelty ceases. 

 "The potatoe plant," says the learned chem- 



* " Researches into the motion of the Juices in the 

 Animal Body." By Justtis Liebig, M. D. Taylor and 

 Walton, 8vo. 



ist, "obviously (!) belongs to the same class 

 of plants as the Hop-plant, namely, to that 

 class which is most seriously injured by the 

 stagnation of their juices in consequence 

 of suppressed transpiration. According to 

 Knight, the tubers are not formed by swell- 

 ing of the proper roots, but by the develope- 

 ment of a kind of underground stalks or 

 runners. He tbuni thiit when the tubers 

 under ground were suppressed, tubers were 

 formed on the stalks above ground; and it 

 is conceivable that every external cause 

 which exerts a hurtful influence on the 

 healthy condition of the leaves and stalks, 

 must act in like manner on the tubers. In 

 the districts which were most severely vis- 

 ited by the so-called potatoe disease in 1846, 

 damp, cold, rainy weather followed a series 

 of very hot days; and in 1847, cold and rain 

 came on, after continued drought, in the be- 

 ginning of September, exactly at the period 

 of the most luxuriant growth of the pota- 

 toes." 



In this at least there is no novelty. It is 

 the same view as that taken by ourselves in- 

 August, 1845, when the disease first broke 

 out, which was very generally adopted, but 

 which we have long since shown to be erro- 

 neous. The opinion was just that which 

 would be formed upon the first hurried 

 glance at the phfenomena, but which a full 

 knowledge of the facts soon compelled its 

 advocates to relinquish. The only material 

 difference that we remark between Professor 

 Liebig's discovery and the old hypothesis 

 now referred to, consists in his introducing 

 it in 1848 as something new, and surround- 

 ing it with an array of quotations from the 

 experiments of Hales, which are familiar to 

 every student of vegetable physiology, toge- 

 ther with some observations of his own on 

 the motion of fluids in living bodies, the con- 

 nection between which and the potatoe dis- 

 ease we fail to discover. 



We wonder that Professor Liebig should 

 not have perceived that the seasons of 1845, 

 6, and 7, in all which the disease was pre- 

 valent, were very dissimilar; we wonder 

 still more that he should not have weighed 

 the mass of valuable evidence that has been 

 collected on the subject in every country in 

 northern Europe, before he jumped to his 

 present conclusion. It is still more extraor- 

 dinary that he should not have asked himself 

 why impeded perspiration, influenza, cold, 

 or whatever else he terms the disease, should 

 not have attacked the potatoe crop before 

 the year 1845, and should have continued to 

 do so every year since through seasons es- 

 sentially difl^erent from each other. 



It would seem, however, that men cannot 

 reason calmly upon this subject. To our 



