SIDE LIGHTS ON THE POTATO DISEASE. 
155 
panied by a brief opinion of their merits in resisting disease. 
Our request was at once acceded to, and one firm also kindly 
furnished us with a large number of potatoes in all stages 
of disease. 
From the latter collection we selected specimens in which 
the disease appeared slight and superficial; and borrowing a 
suggestion from the known efficacy of sulphur in destroying the 
Oidium of the vine, we dusted the potatoes externally and 
over all the cut surfaces with sulphur, and carefully planted 
them in the earth, so that they were entirely surrounded by 
sulphur. In the usual course the disease appeared on the 
foliage, and on digging up the plants in the autumn the crop 
was large ; but all the potatoes were very much diseased, and 
their skins cracked and blistered. 
We tried the effect of dipping potatoes in all stages of the 
disease in the following solution : — Pure carbolic acid, 2 
drachms ; glycerine, 3 drachms ; and distilled water, 3 oz., 
with the following results : After resting half-an-hour in the 
solution, the potatoes changed to an intense crimson-brown 
colour, which, however, at length gradually, but not entirely, 
disappeared, and the foetid odour peculiar to diseased potatoes 
passed quite away. The potatoes seemed at the time none the 
worse for dipping, so we soaked a large series, ranging in time 
from five minutes to twenty-four hours, and planted them in 
large pots ; in the spring the potatoes were all dead and rotten, 
and many specimens were pervaded throughout by a fine deep 
malachite green colour ; the tubers were, moreover, all 
thoroughly infested with worms, larvae and insects. We were 
not at all surprised at these results, or at the ineffectual result 
of any attempt to cure the disease when the cellular tissue of 
the potato has once become corroded, as we consider the decom- 
position of the tissue of the potato analogous with mortifica- 
tion of the human body, and that when it has once set in it is 
impossible to arrest it. 
A potato has been largely advertised of late under the name 
of “ Eed-skin Flourball ” as “ disease resisting,” and we had 
some fine sound specimens sent on to us for experiment by 
Messrs. Sutton and Sons. Messrs. Wheeler and Sons, of Glou- 
cester, also sent us a batch of “Eed-skin Flourball,” ap- 
parently identical with the first, excepting that they were very 
much diseased. We cut all the specimens of both collections 
(sound and diseased) in halves, and carefully tied with twine 
the diseased half of one potato to the sound half of another, 
to see if the naked corrosive plasma from the diseased portion 
would communicate itself to the sound portion. For one 
month Sutton’s potatoes were thus exposed on a garden bed, 
and remained perfectly unaffected by the contact. We then 
