320 I Assembly 



its effect. It does not require so many general causes in the ani- 

 mal kingdom to predispose tliem to hereditary disease. Observa- 

 tion on human families show that four or five generations con- 

 stantly subjected to a regimen either too poor or too rich, produce 

 a characteristic tendency to certain maladies of natures opposite 

 to their condition. Vegetables suffer under like laws. 



It is proved that the solanum tuberosum grows spontaneously 

 in Patagonia and Peru, principally on tlie western coast of that 

 vast extent of country. On the other hand, it is doubtful whether 

 that species (the tuberosum) exists in Mexico, for all the potatoes 

 obtained from the latter are of a different species. Dr. Lindley 

 thinks otherwise; but the absence of the spontaneous tuberosum 

 in Mexico is in full accordance with the assertion of Mons. de 

 Humboldt, that the ancient Mexicans never cultivated the potato. 

 On the other hand, how did the native Indians of Carolina and 

 Virginia, in 1588, if they had not obtained it, either wild or cul- 

 tivated, from Mexico, their neighbors ? Here are some irreconci- 

 lable things. Either the solanum tuberosum was spontaneous in 

 Mexico, or, if cultivated there, it must have been originally from 

 the chain of the Andes. So it is not surprising that it should 

 have been cultivated in the southern part of the United States 

 before the settlement of the Europeans, &c. 



ALPH DE CANDOLLE. 



Farmers' Magazine, London, August, 1852. 



THE POTATO DISEASE AND THE BEAN MALADY. 



All experiments on it, up to this time, have hardly established 

 one single fact tending to a settlement either of its cause or its 

 cure. The facts are these : The potato is attacked when nearest 

 its maturity; it sometimes appears to begin, as a rule, in the south 

 first, then in the north ; sometimes shows spots on the leaves, 

 sometimes upon the stems, as if sulphuric acid had dropped from 

 the clouds; occasionally it attacks the tubers first ; sometimes a 

 single field is attacked and all swept over, as if blackened by an 

 October frost. This has usually happened at the north, about 

 the middle of August, and was always accompanied by a peculiar 

 misty, suffocating vapor, not frosty, but rather hot, and in three 

 days the Avhole breadth of the potato district was one mass of 

 putrefaction. 



