266 
On the Cultivated Potato. 
to expel worms, useful in " husk in calves." Dose : a table- 
spoonful daily in half a pint of a mixture of milk and eggs. 
Lambs, one quarter of the quantity. 
Vaseline. — Emollient to the skin, effective in irritation of 
the surface, chapped heels, mud fever, especially if mixed 
with an eighth part of trisnitrate of bismuth or carbonate of 
lead (white lead), or oxide of zinc. 
Zinc, Chloride of (Sir William Burnett's Disinfecting Fluid), 
mixed with fifty to one hundred parts of water, may be used for 
the purposes for which carbolic acid is employed. 
W. — On the Cultivated Potato. By Eael CatiiCAKT. 
The cultivated potato and its inherent tendency to degenerate 
is a subject which in this 'Journal' has never been comprehen- 
sively treated, and very profitably it might occupy many care- 
fully studied pages in many volumes. The contents, however, 
of the current publication had been already arranged, when, 
with a view to render the approaching season available, it 
appeared desirable to add a paper, imperfect though it may be, 
suggestive of seasonable operations and consequently undelayed 
experiments. 
Concerning the importance of the subject of our inquiry — the 
potato, the bread-root of Great Britain, and the struma which 
so disastrously affects it — little need be said. In its way the 
enigma of the nineteenth century, no one kindred topic has 
probably occasioned the same amount of writing : and the scien- 
tific interest is more than equalled by the economic importance 
of a question so hidden, so difficult, and so apparently insoluble. 
Plants from the ' torrid zones rarely become naturalised in 
England ; and there is high authority for stating that the 
potato has never been naturalised in Europe.* This plant, 
America's best gift, is of all those cultivated the most liable to 
be influenced and changed by differences of soil, climate, and 
treatment. Economically, the productiveness of the potato is 
unrivalled, yielding per acre, thirty times by w^eight more than 
wheat. More than one hundred years have passed and gone 
since Howard, the philanthropist, characterized the potato as 
a most valuable part of the sustenance of our fellow-creatures, 
the labouring poor. We have almost forgotten that some forty 
years ago, our Government and that of the United States 
* ' Eney. Brit.' Current Ed. Art. " Acclimatisation." — Wallace. 
