THEORY OF THE POTATO FAILURE. 203 



of vegetable production will not agree. Let it be 

 remembered with what vigour any plant new to 

 the soil takes the earth, and how kindly the earth 

 gives welcome to the stranger, if at all there be a 

 fair adaptation of climate; and let it be remembered 

 too, that this mutual understanding of soil and 

 plant continues uninterrupted only till there be an 

 undue interference with the law that insists on di- 

 versified productions; and then it will be judged no 

 anomalous thing that the potato at a certain period 

 should be reduced, as it now is, to a precarious 

 growth. 



Yet in all this, while we find nothing to blame, 

 we will find much to admire. The Creator, who 

 abhors idols, will not suffer one plant to be the 

 sole dependence of rational creatures; and if they 

 will so depend for their life they must be poor and 

 sickly, and see their idol broken before their eyes. 

 Not that any plant must cease to grow. Turnip, 

 carrot, and red clover, still live, so will the potato: 

 but its cultivation to excess will not do; it must be 

 content with a more limited field, and allow of other 

 things, in fair proportion, agreeably at once to the 

 constitution of man, and of the ground on which he 

 lives. 



The moral part of the Almighty's scheme ought 

 not to be overlooked. It is not the feeding of man's 

 body alone, but the exercise of man's mind, that 

 the Deity promotes by his beneficent arrange- 

 ments. When men first begin to cultivate the 

 ground, they are weak and ignorant like infants 

 at the breast, and the earth gives her abundance 



