POTATO ROT. 63? 



Mr. Smee, another author. " Don J. Pavon says, that Solarium 

 tuberosum (the potato) grows wild in the environs of Lima, 

 and fourteen leagues from Lima on the coast ; and I have found 

 it in the kingdom of Chili ;" and Mr. Lambert adds, " I have 

 lately received from M. Pavon very fine wild specimens of 

 Solanum tuberosum, collected by himself in Peru. In Chili, 

 it is generally found in steep, rocky places, where it could 

 never have been cultivated, and where its introduction must 

 have been almost impossible. It is very common about Valpa- 

 raiso, and Cruikshank has noticed it along the coast for fifteen 

 leagues to the northward of that port j how much farther it 

 may extend he knows not." From all accounts of the native 

 place of the potato, it must be supposed that a mountain coun- 

 try is most congenial to its habits. 



The varieties of the potato are very numerous. A list of 

 160 kinds has been seen in England ; and, in this country, 

 they are believed to be not less numerous, Mr. Cole, late 

 editor of the New England Farmer, is said to have raised forty 

 new varieties from the seed. 



The reproductive power of plants is in the seed only. It is 

 only by the development of the embryo contained in the seed, 

 that a new life can be produced. This embryo of life is not 

 fully developed at once, but continues gradually to be developed 

 in the production of new parts, — of buds especially, which are 

 embryo branches springing forth, multiplying the limbs, ex- 

 tending the plant, and changing its form. These buds, if 

 suffered to remain and vegetate on the parent stock, become 

 new branches only ; but if removed from the stem and placed 

 in the earth, in a condition to grow, become a full and perfect 

 plant instead of a branch of the parent. In this case, however, 

 it is merely the extension or multiplication of the form of the 

 life already in being, and not a new life, — not a new individual. 



This principle is considered important, as being the basis on 

 which the author's ideas of the disease rests, and he gives some 

 authorities in confirmation. 



Dr. James E. Smith, a scientific writer on botany, says : — 

 " By buds, as we well know, plants are propagated, and in that 

 sense each bud is a separate being, or a young plant in itself^ 



