UepoH on Prevention and Cure of Potato Disease." 771 
soil in which they were planted, being stiff London clay, was very 
unfavourable for the proper development underground, and none of 
the tubers were fully ripened. No disease appeared in the plots. 
But, after the middle of August, some diseased haulms were spread 
among the potatoes. The only plot that was thereafter attacked by 
the fungus was “ Carter’s Surprise.” The leaves had already begun to 
lose their vigour, and the disease .speedily completed the v/ork of 
destruction, rendering it impossible to try the houillie bordelaise. 
The plots which were still in vigorous growth were carefully 
watched, but no indications of disease were detected in the leaves 
above ground, nor in the potatoes when they were dug. It was 
proposed to treat the potatoes after they were attacked, and not to 
use the bouillie in these small plots as a preventive. 
Careful observations were made twice daily of the temperature 
(maximum and minimum, wet and dry bulb), of the barometrical 
pressure, and of the rainfall, during the whole progress of the 
experiment. These observations had no importance, however, seeing 
that the disease did not appear in the plots. 
Cn.\,RLES WlIITEHEAD, 
Chairman of the Seeds and Plant Diseases Committee. 
December G, 1892. 
THE WOBURN EXPERIMENTS ON PREVENTION 
AND CURE OF » POTATO DISEASE.” 
The Royal Agricultural Society, in addition to the experiments 
which it was conducting throughout the country on behalf of the 
Board of Agriculture (described on pp. 761-70 of the present number 
of the Journal), determined to institute others of its own, and the 
Woburn Sab-Committee drew up an extensive scheme for carrying 
out an inquiry at the Society’s Experimental Farm at Woburn 
(Bedfordshire). One great advantage in this plan was that Mr. 
Elliott, the Resident Manager of the Farm, was always upon the 
spot, and that he is experienced in work of this kind. 
The soil at the Woburn Farm is a light sandy loam, very suit- 
able for potato-growing. The field chosen was that known as 
Lansome Field, on a portion of which field experiments have been 
in progress for some years, but which is unfortunately not suffi- 
ciently uniform all over to make it a good field for close scientific 
experiment. As, however, these trials were rather for comparative 
purposes, namely, to test the efficacy of the bouillie bordelaise mix- 
ture in preventing or in checking the spread of potato-disease, the 
known slight inequalities of the land were not of such material con- 
sequence, and though they had appeared in the course of experi- 
ments requiring close accuracy, they were not more than would be 
found in any ordinary field selected as suitable for an experiment 
such as proposed. 
