86 The Potatoe Plague. 
hence the facility with which the potatoe containing it under- 
goes putrefaction. Any injury to health from the use of 
these potatoes is out of the question, and nowhere in Ger- 
many has such an effect been observed. It may be of some 
use to call attention to the fact that diseased potatoes may 
easily and at little expense, be preserved for a length of 
time, and afterwards employed in various ways, by cutting 
them into slices about one quarter of an inch thick, and im- 
mersing them in water containing two to three per cent. of 
sulphuric acid. After twenty-four or thirty-six hours the 
liquor may be drawn off, and all remains of it washed away 
by steeping in successive portions of fresh water. Treated 
in this manner the potatoes are easily dried. ‘The pieces are 
white and of little weight, and can be ground to flour and 
paked into bread along with the flour of wheat. I think it 
probable that the diseased potatoes, after being sliced and kept 
for some time in contact with weak sulphuric acid, so as to 
be penetrated by the acid, may be preserved in that state in 
pits. 
An advocate of the theory that the disease is caused by 
fungus, gives the following statement: — “That this disease 
is occasioned by a fungus in the leaf, I have no doubt, and 
such I believe is the public opinion in general. I am equally 
well assured that the gangrene or mortification is a mere con- 
sequence of the fungus. If a certain predisposition in the 
potatoe plant, occasioned by an advanced state of the ele- 
ments themselves, were alone necessary to give unbounded 
scope to this fungus, how, I would ask, has it happened, that 
this strange condition of atmosphere has never occurred be- 
fore, since the introduction of the potatoe from South Ameri- 
ca — now, I believe, nearly two hundred years? Or, shall it 
be caid that the disease is indeed new to Europe? On look- 
ing over the weather registries for the month of August, I 
find that S. W., W., and N. W. winds prevailed through 
