208 CIVIC BIOLOGY 



scope, and may be prepared to conclude that its final solution 

 must depend on intelligent, world-wide cooperation. 



Irish famine. It was the great famine in Ireland in 1845- 

 1847 that opened the eyes of the whole world to what a 

 fungous disease of a plant might mean to a people, and the 

 awakening that followed marks the beginning of modern 

 plant pathology. The case illustrates, too, the apparent 

 suddenness of the attack, and also the total destruction of 

 the crop the second year if rotation is not resorted to. 

 Ireland had become densely populated, a large part of the 

 people were almost wholly dependent on the potato for 

 food, and the fungus that caused the famine was the late 

 blight, or rot, of the potato Pliytophthora infestans. 



The harvest of 1845 promised to be the richest gathered for many 

 years. Suddenly, in one short month; in one week it might be said, 

 the withering breath of a simoom seemed to sweep the land, blasting- 

 all in its path. I myself saw whole tracts of potato growth changed in 

 one night from smiling luxuriance to a shriveled and blackened waste. 

 A shout of alarm arose. But the buoyant nature of the Celtic peasant 

 did not yet give way. The crop w r as so profuse that it was expected 

 the healthy portion would reach an average result. Winter revealed 

 the alarming fact that the tubers had rotted in pit and storehouse. 

 Nevertheless the farmers, like hapless men who double their stakes 

 to recover losses, made only more strenuous exertions to till a larger 

 breadth in 1846. Although already feeling the pinch of sore distress, 

 if not actual famine, they worked as if for dear life ; they begged and 

 borrowed on any terms the means whereby to crop the land once more. 

 The pawn offices were choked with the humble finery that had shone 

 at the village dance or the christening feast ; the banks and money- 

 lenders were besieged with appeals for credit. Meals were stinted, 

 backs were bared. Anything, anything to tide over the interval to 

 the harvest of " Forty-six." O God, it is a dreadful thought that 

 all this effort was but more surely leading them to ruin ! It was 

 this harvest of Forty-six that sealed their doom. Not partially but 

 completely, utterly, hopelessly, it perished. As in the previous year, 

 all promised brightly up to the close of July. Then, suddenly, in a 

 night, whole areas were blighted ; and this time, alas ! no portion 





