On the Treatment of Decayed Potatoes, 8j-c. 
549 
the season at that period of the year when both the plant and the 
tuber required most direct solar action. 
If the nature of the disease be admitted, then a most important 
practical consideration arises. The constitutional weakness in the 
cell walls must exist in all those potatoes which, as yet, have 
shown no symptom of decay. This being the case, every potato 
is liable to yield to external influences, and will certainly decay 
unless it be placed under such conditions as to render the pro- 
gress of decay impossible. We know what these conditions are, 
and therefore the further progress of the malady must be entirely 
the result of negligence and ignorance. 
With the complete conviction that potatoes will still progress in 
decay unless cared for and properly treated — with a full know- 
ledge that even the extent of the calamity will not induce the 
peasant at once to depart from his former coarse mode of treat- 
ing the tubers, it becomes a most important question for intelli- 
gent fai'mers, where they are to look for seed for a future year. 
Under ordinary circumstances I would have refrained from lec- 
turing on this practical point, but the conditions are peculiar, and 
Science can be our only guide ; for experience does not exist to 
point out a well-trodden path upon which Practice herself may 
walk without scientific aid. The question becomes of great im- 
portance when we consider the state of the crop. Whatever may 
have been the case in favoured localities, all those who have had 
access to the most extensive information agree that the potato 
crop this year was not much, if at all, above the average. This 
being the case, we must have had in this country only a sufficient 
supply for seed and for domestic consumption. A considerable 
part, no matter what proportion, of the crop is destroyed ; and, 
therefore, supposing the home consumption to be as great as for- 
merly, there must be a deficiency of seed for spring planting, if 
we continue to follow the old methods. But these methods are 
not indispensable ; and, therefore, it is of importance to know 
how far we may relax them, so as to suit the exigencies of the 
present case. 
The anatomical structure of a plant is very complex, but its 
organization, so far as it is necessary to view it with relation to 
agriculture, is remarkably simple. It is well known that one j)art 
of a plant may be transformed into or be made to produce another. 
The leaf of an orange or fig-tree, when planted, produces a new 
orange or new fig-tree; the branch of a tree stuck in the ground 
is changed into a tree similar to that which produced it; the tuber, 
or fleshy enlargement of the stem of the potato plant, occasions a 
new plant to arise : and the transformation or production has been 
so far carried on, that Woodward turned a willow tree upside 
down, and the branches put in the earth acquired a fibrous struc- 
