HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. Iflg 



retaining a kind of reddish case, marked with longitudinal ridges, which fill 

 up as many in relief on the woody tissue. Deprived of this rust-colored 

 envelope, the medullary cylinders do not, by any means, offer equally a solid 

 and continuous tissue ; many of them present cavities, divided into compart- 

 ments by partitions sometimes entire and sometimes more or less torn, of 

 which one is represented in fig. 2 on the transverse section, and several in 

 fig. 3 on a longitudinal section. Figs. 4 and 5, both enlarged, represent a 

 transverse, the second, a longitudinal section of the delicate medullary sub- 

 stance. We have said that the figure was copied from the drawing of Mr. 

 Reeves, after collation made of this drawing with the dried specimens. 



The longitudinal and transverse section of the root, fig. 1, is taken from 

 the lower portion of the plant, which arrived dead at the Kew Garden. 



J. E. P., in Flore des Serves, 



THE POTATO— HAS IT DEGENERATED ? 



Dear Sir — The hackneyed subject of the Potato disease, is just now 

 taking a round through the agricultural press. The discovery now made, 

 is, that Potatoes from seed are free from the disease, and that to raise them 

 from the tubers is an unnatural method of propagation, serving at the best 

 but to continue the individual, which like individuals of the animal kind, 

 must have its periods of youth, maturity, and old age. But unfortunately 

 for the discovery or discoverer, others have tried years ago the same mode, 

 and met with failures in their seedlings, equal to those which befel their 

 tubers. It is equally unfortunate for the deduction that individual varieties 

 wear out through a natural period of duration, that the Potato itself is 

 opposed to this theory, together with many principles of Vegetable Physi- 

 ology. 



Those who wish to trace for themselves the history of the failures to keep 

 seedling potatoes free from the disease, can look through the few back 

 volumes of the " Gardeners' Chronicle," or "Gardeners' and Farmers' Jour- 

 nal." And why should they not fail? It is true that a weakness, or 

 indeed, any peculiarity can be perpetuated by cuttings, and so it can be by 

 seed ; and very often by this process such weakness or peculiarity is ren- 

 dered more fixed and unchangeable. Grafts from old and worn-out fruit 

 trees afford but a weak and degenerate progeny. Seeds from the same 

 trees bring forth a race equally enfeebled. These are well-known facts, 

 and the maxim is universal, that " thrifty grafts make thrifty trees," and 



