The Potatoe Plague. 53 
diluted honey, transparent, and tasting like the syrup of re- 
fined sugar. It thickens as the sun rises, and ceases to be 
fluid by ten or eleven o’clock. 
I leave it to the reader’s ingenuity to discover how the 
honey dew of Carolina can afflict the poor potatoes of Yan- 
keedom, where it has not been seen for a hundred years, if 
ever, and how a disease that originated thirty years ago, in 
Kkurope, certainly, and probably in Ireland, should at last 
have found its primal cause among the alligators of North 
America. This theory seems to me too absurd to demand 
serious refutation. 
Having now stated what I believe but partially and what I 
do not believe at all, the reader is, perhaps, desirous to know 
what Ido believe. I say, I have no theory but nature’s, but 
that which is consistent with experience and common sense, 
but that will account for the potatoe plague, in all its phases, 
whenever and wherever it may appear; and which, while it 
detects the cause of the disease, also prescribes the remedy. 
But, firstly, 
There are some things certain, for which I ask no man to 
take my word, and which it may be of advantage to all to 
learn, viz :— 
1. The disease is not confined to any particular kind of 
soil or to any locality. Some assert that it pertains exclu- 
sively to dry soil; others as stoutly maintain that it belongs 
only to wet. 
2. It does not exclusively affect any particular kind or 
kinds of potatoes. 
8. The affected potatoes, like other diseased vegetables, 
are unwholesome, if not poisonous. 
4. Decomposition proceeds more rapidly among the infect- 
ed potatoes, when placed in a heap; whence I do not infer, 
as many others do, that it is best to defer digging till late in 
the Fall. 
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