44 JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



family. But our home raisers awakened to the need of doing 

 something to counteract the flooding of our trade with American 

 sorts ; and further, alive to the value of these strangers as parents 

 of better strains, they utilised the best for seed-bearing purposes, 

 fairly skimming the cream off them and casting the residue aside 

 as worthless. 



Our esteemed friend, Mr. Eobert Fenn, who had at Wood- 

 stock been raising varieties which were perfect in quality, but 

 lacking in robustness and productiveness, was one of the first to 

 utilise American varieties as parents. Many others presently 

 followed suit, with the result, briefly put, that dispensing with 

 all old sorts, and nearly all American varieties, we have a race 

 of Potatoes which is productive, robust, gives good quality, and 

 supplies the tables of the poorest in the land cheaply and 

 abundantly. But apart from the Americans, which in spite of 

 their comparative robustness still succumbed wholesale to the 

 deadly effects of the Peronospora, there was this very fungus 

 with all its dire destructiveness constantly forcing upon Potato 

 growers the need for battling with it for the preservation of our 

 Potato stocks. It is idle to regard it as other than a terrible 

 and a disastrous visitation, and in years past, when we had none 

 other to depend upon but Eegents, Fortyfolds, Victorias, and 

 similar tender though delicious varieties, there was at times 

 reason to fear that the Potato crops of the kingdom would be 

 absolutely decimated. 



Here was opportunity for a display of that native force which 

 makes the modern Briton the compeer of the ancient Roman. 

 To comparatively conquer, if not absolutely to subdue the 

 insidious foe, was a feat worthy of accomplishment, and I be- 

 lieve, comparatively, that great feat has, thanks to the per- 

 sistent efforts of the Potato raisers more than to any other body, 

 been accomplished. Let it not be forgotten that no other vege- 

 table has had such a deadly enemy to contend with as the 

 Potato. Remembering still further how deeply the tuber is 

 associated with the feeding and the health of the community, 

 there was found special stimulus for labour in the direction of 

 subduing the disease. Scientists told us what it was they could 

 do, but the more practical men have striven to battle with it, and 

 the honours of victory, so far as they have been won, rest with 

 the raisers of the varieties more than with any other class. 



