54 The Potatoe Plague. 
It is an undenied, uncontroverted, uncontrovertible and 
undeniable fact that, in both the animal and vegetable king. 
‘doms, between which there is a close analogy, every stock 
propagated for a long course of years within itself, exhausts 
its vital energies and deteriorates. This has been known to 
all nations, in all ages; this is the reason of the wise prohi- 
bition of the intermarriages between near relatives; this is 
the cause of the deterioration of most of the reigning families 
in Kurope; and hence it is that there are no more heroes 
among the Bourbons, or wise men among the Guelphs. The 
intermarrying cretins and cagots have transmitted their taint- 
ed blood to a race of dwarfs and idiots, and — but why need 
I multiply instances? —every practical farmer and sports- 
man knows the inevitable consequence of “breeding in and 
in,” and breeding from defective specimens. And this dete- 
tioration is as true and certain in the vegetable kingdom, 
The scrub oaks, and dry, short grass of the western prairies 
attest it. That the potatoe is not exempt from this inherent 
tendency to deterioration, I shall cite two, among a thousand 
evidences, 
For thirty years, or more, this disease has been making 
slow and insidious progress in Europe; but it is not until 
quite lately that it has excited any alarm on this continent. 
What does this show, if not, that the old stocks of Europe, 
having had time to exhaust their vital energies, have at last 
fallen into inevitable decay, which is but beginning among 
the younger stocks of America? The once famous apple 
potatoe of Ireland, for along series of years the pride and 
boast of the island, at last showed such signs of decay that the 
cultivation of it was entirely abandoned. This happened 
some years ago, and the rest of the Irish stocks appear to be 
now further advanced in the same progress. 
In another famous potatoe growing country, Nova Scotia, 
the progress of the disease, and its arrest, speak volumes in 
