154 
POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
before planting). A rest clearly takes place with the fungus 
which produces the potato disease ; but it does not follow that 
because we can light upon the fungus in a resting condition, 
we can therefore destroy it. It is not at all improbable that its 
winter life may reside in extremely fine compacted threads 
under ground and near the decaying tubers, but it would be 
still as impossible to exterminate these threads as it would be to 
put a stop to the harvest of our higher woodland fungi. 
There are many difficulties yet to be cleared up as regards 
the winter life of fungi ; one of which was very forcibly put by 
Dr. Bull at the last great Hereford Fungus-meeting in regard 
to Agaricus tuberosus (Bull) and A. cirrhatus (Schum.), both 
of which spring from a tuberiform base, which rests during the 
winter : the former is said to grow on dead Pussulce and on the 
ground, whilst we have found it imbedded at the base of the 
tubes of dead Polyporei ; the latter (A. cirrhatus), more imme- 
diately referred to by Dr. Bull, which is generally found amongst 
dead leaves, he found imbedded in abundance some inch-and- 
half or two inches deep in the solid earth. How the compacted 
mycelium of one of the most tender of Agarics got so low down 
in the earth, and was afterwards able to push the tender perfect 
plant through the hard soil, was a difficulty he could not 
explain, and one which was by no means lessened by the fact of 
the plants being found precisely on the spot where some gigantic 
specimens of an Agaric (A. aureus) new to Britain had been 
previously found, and the reasonable surmise, that as in the case 
of Agaricus nebularis and Typhula phacorrhiza , they were in 
some way connected with each other. 
As to any variety of potato being “ disease-proof,” De Bary 
has himself said that there is nothing in one potato plant 
more than in another to predispose it to the attack of the 
fungus ; or in other words, no sort of potato, healthy or un- 
healthy, new or old, can withstand the attacks of the spores of 
the Peronospora. From the conflicting nature of the evidence 
on this point, principally from growers for the markets, we are 
bound to return a verdict of “ not proven ; ” and from the fact 
of the Royal Agricultural Society now offering prizes for 
66 disease-proof ” sorts, it may be surmised that the Council of 
this Society consider it reasonable to suppose that some po- 
tatoes may really be able to throw off the attacks of the 
Peronospora . The forthcoming great trial of potatoes by the 
Society will probably put this question at rest; whilst the 
following record of some experiments of our own, very recently 
laid before the Royal Horticultural Society, will probably be 
read with interest at the present juncture. 
We wrote in the autumn of 1872 to several nurserymen, 
asking them to forward us samples of different potatoes, accom- 
