152 [Assembly 



forbid his approach, he may be thinking, perhaps, that when his 

 heap only gets rid of such a disagreeable odor the manure will be 

 first rate j and as he does not see the straw and solid matter 

 rising towards the clouds, no one need undertake to convince him 

 that his manure is not all there. 



THE POTATO DYING OUT. 



By John Bullock, editor of the Banner of Industry. 



In examining the statistical reports with respect to many of 

 the agricultural productions of the country, we are impressed 

 with the belief that they are passing away. 



Nations, races, creeds, diseases, and agricultural products, alike 

 would seem to rise, prosper, become dominant, and then die out. 

 We are all familiar with the rise, progress and decline of nations 

 and races, each presenting some peculiar feature which has given 

 it strength and power, but which also contained the seeds of its 

 death. 



It is so with human disease. Some of those fearful epidemics 

 which, like the plague, have passed over nations, spreading 

 death and terror, are now entirely gone We have no knowledge 

 of them except in history. In their places we have other diseases 

 which were unknown to them, and which, we doubt not, will be 

 unknown a few centuries hence. Among these are the cholera — 

 which has already been reft of half its worse effects — and that 

 disease which attacks the devotees of pollution. 



The potato has been known as a g( neral article of commerce 

 and food for less than three hundred years. Humbolt thinks that 

 it orig nally came from Chili, where the Indians cultivated it 

 under the name of battatas ; it may have been brought by Eng- 

 lish travellers to Virginia and Carolina. It is stated that Sir Wal- 

 ter Raleigh took the plant from America to Ireland as a curiosity. 

 He certainly could not have been aware of its value as an article 

 of food, for when he saw the plant he directed his gardener to 

 dig up the " weeds." Jt is i rg d that from those potatoes Europe 

 was mostly sup lied. In a short time its culture was advocated 

 on the ground that it \va:^ a root whic'i would sustain life, and 



