The Potatoe Plague. 45 
our own country are the complaints of entire failure or partial 
destruction heard, but the voice of lamentation and the fear 
of famine come to us with a foreboding moan from the British 
isles, and some of the countries of continental Europe. The 
rot this year has been universal in its effects, and the exi- 
gency has called forth particular and anxious inquiries into 
the nature of the disease, accounts of which, and the re- 
sults arrived at, are subjoined. 
It would, perhaps, be difficult to name a subject on which 
more has been written, or which has engaged the attention of 
more able men than the prevalent potatoe blight, rot, or by 
whatever name it may be called. The plague and the yellow 
fever have not been more anxiously discussed; nor can it be 
denied that the subject is of almost equal importance. A 
calamity that involves the destruction of a great portion of 
the food and labor of the civilized world, and reduces millions 
of fellow-creatures to literal starvation, cannot be too dili- 
gently studied; if, happily, thereby, the evil may be averted, 
checked, or in any considerable degrec lessened. It is esti- 
mated by those more competent to form an estimate than I 
can pretend to be, that-three fourths, at least, of the potatoe 
crop of all Ireland will have been lost the present season. 
Supposing that the potatoe is the principal food of only four 
of the millions of that wretched country, what an amount of 
human suffering does the prospect present. 
I find, by a careful comparison of much that has been writ- 
ten on this interesting topic, that most of those who have 
made it-a subject of inquiry, have fallen into the common 
error of generalizing too much, of deducing the rule from the 
particular instance, instead of tracing wherein the instance 
has coincided with, or deviated from, the rule. Now, there 
are countless varieties of the potatoe, and to suppose that the 
treatment which has succeéded with one, or two, or a dozen 
of these, is the one only means to be used with regard to the 
