76 THE AMERICAN MONTHLY [Apr 
noticed by all cultivators in the formation of the new 
tubers. M. Bernard desires to find out whether by insu- 
lating an earlier and more regular infection of the roots, 
he would make the yield earlier and less variable. To 
this end he raised two lots of potatoes under the same 
conditions, except that to the one he added the fungus in 
abundance, while in the other he allowed the roots to be 
infected only by some filaments occurring at the surface 
of the tuber. In the former case he obtained a crop that 
was larger, earlier and more regular. There is thus 
plainly a relation between the production of the tubers 
and the infection of the roots. 
These ideas explain several facts relative to the intro- 
duction of the potato into KEurope—facts that have never 
been fully cleared up before. It must be noted that the 
fusarium exists on the tubers but not on the seeds. Now 
the introduction of the potato into Europe was by tubers ; 
by their means it was cultivated from the outset, and it 
seems that the method of cultivation by seed was not 
- thought of until the plant was so largely grown and so 
highly esteemed that the production of new varieties was 
sought. At the outset, then, this fungus must have been 
introduced and acclimated at the same time as the plant. 
The history of the first attempt at growth from seed is 
little known. Nevertheless there is in existence a docu- 
ment on the subject whose age givesitinterest. Charles 
de l’Ecluse, who was probably the first to cultivate the 
potato in Germany, at the end of the sixteenth century, 
and who acted by making it known by distributing tubers 
and seeds, reports in his ““Rariorum Plantarum Historia” 
(History of Rare Plants) that “we must rely for the con- 
servation of the species on the tubers alone.’ The seeds 
that he sent to his friends sprouted perfectly, but the 
plants produced flowers and not tubers. EH. Rose who 
cites this passage from ]’[cluse’s work, notes properly 
that it is of great interest. Nowadays things occur dif- 
