On the Cultivated Potato. 
295 
In due course this communication was courteously acknow- 
ledged. 
Government aid I do think may be fairly sought for in 
the following direction. After years — a century — of inquiry, 
sharpened by economic disaster and human misery and starva- 
tion, science cannot answer my query — What is the conduct 
of the potato-plant and its circumstances as regards its neigh- 
bours, and the other surroundings of its natural habitat ? I take 
up the 'Admiralty Manual of Scientific Inquiry,'* and find 
inquiry suggested in South America and elsewhere : sarsa- 
parilla, balsam of copaiva, ipecacuanha, and the milk- or cow- 
tree of Para — which tree, in case of the continuance of " foot- 
and-mouth " disease, might prove a godsend to the nursery — but 
not one single word of anything so common as the everyday 
potato. H.M.S. 'Alert 'f has been on a cruise in those waters. 
" The cocoanut industry," we are told, " has recently fallen off, 
owing to the ravages of a worm, and the old spice industry has 
been revived ; " not a word of the anti-scorbutic — the modest 
potato. Then every one is not a Darwin, and the authorities 
were certainly not on the ' Alert.' Yet there might be alertness 
on the part of Government — the Government of a nation that 
boasts of ships on every sea : some ship of the South Pacific 
squadron, some 'Alert' having a competent man on board, 
scientifically equipped with an opera-glass and a sketch-book, 
might some fine day take a summer cruise round the Chonos 
Archipelago ; and if this competent man were not exactly a 
Darwin, he might, as much as possible, endeavour to resemble 
that pre-eminent philosopher. 
My first letter to Mr. Baker was dated on June 1st, 1883, and 
was to this effect : after reference to comparatively the very 
little the ' Journal ' tells us on the subject in question, I went 
on to say : I hold the disease in the cultivated potato is a 
conjugation of the verb "degenerate:" I hold that, if nature 
were free, the whole of the cultivated potato would be killed off, 
excepting only perhaps a few chosen plants, left to replenish 
the European branch of the potato family ; or perhaps the law 
of extinction would have full force and effect. I understand 
it is a fact that the potato in Europe has never grown spon- 
taneously.! The importance of the whole subject is hardly 
realised: we have within the three kingdoms some 1,400,000 
acres annually, which at only 10/. an acre represents a huge 
* Published by authorily of the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty for 
the use of officers of H.M. Navy and travellers in general. John Murray, 
Albemarle Street, London. 
t ' Cruise of the Alert ; four years in Patagonian, Polynesian, and Mascarene 
Waters.' By E. W. Coppinger, M.D. London : Sonnenschein and Cc. 1883. 
X ' Ency. Brit.,' current Ed., Art. " Acclimatization, ' which see. 
