ON HYBRIDIZATION AMONGST VEGETABLES. 



107 



suers, was a stupendous miracle. The plague of locusts fell 

 last year on Zante, and the murrain both of beasts and potatoes 

 has fallen on our own land ; but in Egypt they were miraculous, 

 because specially invoked by God's prophet. The demonstration 

 of the natural means through which the Almighty worked a 

 miracle, which could have been performed by no slight of hand, 

 but by the power of Him alone, increases (instead of diminish- 

 ing) the force of the miracle, by strengthening its credibility, 

 and distinguishing it from the pretences of impostors ; and its 

 force is infinitely greater when those natural means, unsuspected 

 by the persons who witnessed and reported it, are brought to 

 light by the progress of science in confirmation of the fact. I 

 assert, therefore, without hesitation, that, if the diversification of 

 the human races was intended with a view to effect their dis- 

 persion, such a miracle would, in all probability, have been 

 effected by the operation of natural causes, and that the like 

 diversification of other races proves that it was so effected. 



In the first part of this treatise I observe the following mis- 

 prints : — p. 6, latter for later; p. 7, creeping for creeping 

 things; p. 19, in inconsistency for of inconsistency; and the 

 omission of the words 'and cruenta' after 'juncea ' at the end of 

 the second paragraph in p. 28. 



XII. — Observations on the Propagation of Bunt (Uredo 

 Caries, D.C.) made ivith an especial reference to the Potato 

 Disease. By the Rev. M. J. Berkeley, M.A., F.L.S. 

 (Communicated Jan. 18, 1847.) 

 Another year has brought with it a recurrence of the ravages 

 amongst potatoes, but has added little to our knowledge of the 

 cause of the disease. On the Continent, where it has in general 

 appeared under a milder form, little attention, comparatively, has 

 been paid to the subject, and at home, where unhappily we are 

 suffering to such an alarming extent, while various causes have 

 been assigned in a more or less dogmatic spirit, and the at- 

 mospheric theory seems very generally to have been abandoned, 

 and indeed could not have been maintained in the face of the 

 notorious difference between the cosmical phenomena of the two 

 years, apart from all consideration of the history of the disease, 

 the fungal theory has met with more favour, though by no 

 means with universal credence. 



Professor Liebman in Denmark, Mr. Moore of Glasnevin, Mr. 

 Queckett, Mr. Graham, and several excellent observers in the 

 ' Gardener's Chronicle,' have more or less decidedly recurred to 

 the notion that the disease is dependent on the influence of 



