Potato Disease, 293 



1. The committee have continued the experiments pre- 

 viously made by Mr. Thorn, and come to the conclusion 

 that the fumes of burning sulphur have a direct tendency 

 to impede the progress of the potato disease. 



2. That the application of sulphurous fumes is very 

 easy : a hogshead, with two or three half-inch or one-inch 

 holes near the bottom, may be three-fourths filled with 

 potatoes, and a pan containing one pound of sulphur having 

 been ignited with red-hot cinders, and placed over the 

 potatoes, and the cask then covered with a lid, so as to 

 confine the sulphurous fumes. Experiments as to the 

 duration of time necessary for the process were made from 

 fifteen minutes to twelve hours. No inconvenience ensued 

 from their remaining the longer period, but the disease was 

 stopped in a quarter of an hour. The committee have 

 named a hogshead of potatoes for an experiment ; but 

 they consider that a large pit of potatoes may be easily 

 operated upon, by removing a quantity of potatoes from 

 both ends, and igniting some sulphur at the windward end, 

 the top being covered with soil. A hogshead of potatoes 

 stored three days, in which the disease was fast progressing, 

 had risen in temperature to 62° F. ; healthy potatoes being 

 52° in the same room ; thus showing an increase in tem- 

 perature of 10° F. The same cask of potatoes was then 

 subjected to sulphurous fumes, applied in the mode above 

 proposed, and the next day the temperature differed from 

 the natural ones only 5° F. 



3. The committee had immersed diseased potatoes in 

 sulphuric acid, or oil of vitriol, mixed with 40 parts of water, 

 and found that the disease in the potatoes so treated had 

 not progressed. 



4. Diseased potatoes were dipped in two gallons of 



