286 
0)1 the Cultivated Potato. 
not the entire good faith of the experimenter, but the sanitary 
condition and circumstances of the plants on which M. De Bary 
operated. The potato-fungus, it appears, is at least an impostor 
in this sense, it is not peculiar to the potato only, or even ta 
that class of plants : M. De Bary says, " it is often found on 
other species of the Solanacece, and on other species not allied ; 
it grows only in a stunted condition on the Dulcamara." Why 
stunted on the common Dulcamara of the hedges, because that 
plant grows under normal conditions ; it has vitality and con- 
stitution, and is thus enabled to discourage or to cast off the 
parasite. The fungus appears on the Lilium lancifolium three 
weeks before the potato is affected.* It is stated that the 
stinging-nettle and the groundsel were liable to the curl, and 
whether or not to the parasite of 1845, I know not. It might, I 
think, be inferred from the pages of this ' Journal ' f that the 
potato-fungus, the straw-fungus, and the clover-fungus are one 
and the same ; but, if so, I am advised on high authority that 
any such proposition is absolutely inconsistent with the botanical 
knowledge of the day. 
Of the habits and conduct of the wild plant in its natural 
habitat we know but little. Mr. Baker says " I have given in 
my Linnean paper all I know on this head." There are various 
clues leading to the idea that the potato is a social plant, that 
is to say, it desires association with another plant or plants of 
a different species. Lemmon found his wild potato in the 
Arizona under a tangle of prickly bushes and cacti ; again, he 
found it flourishing under a squash vine. In Chili the best 
potatoes are cultivated in the rainy provinces of Chiloe and 
Valdivia, where the yield varies from 10 to 40 for one, the 
average annual produce being 3,100,000 bushels for the whole 
of Chili.J Inquiry should be pushed in the direction of the 
South American home of the plant : if you desired to study a 
Frenchman, you would visit his own grand country. You cer- 
tainly would not hunt up a specimen at the Sabloniere in 
Leicester Square. 
The older writers talk of the plant as a creeper or trailing 
plant : and curiously through the centuries there have been 
constant attempts to force down the haulm into a creeping 
position : is this an instinctive desire to follow nature, and has 
constant cultivation too much drilled the potato out of its 
natural form into "heads up, soldiers"? The artificial bending 
down of haulm is to make it a conductor for diverting wet and 
• ' Journal,' R. A. S. E., vol. xix, 1858. Art. « Potato." 
t 'Journiil,' R. A. S. E., vol. x. p. 510. See also p. 515, 'On a new Clover 
Disease.' P. Mouillcfert. 
J Ency. Erit., Current Ed., Art. " Cliili.'' 
