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POPULAR SCIENCE REVIEW. 
duced underground, and not only traversing the interior of the 
potatoes, but whitening the earth and investing the broken 
brick used for draining such plants as were grown in flower- 
pots ; this mycelium appearing to belong to Volutella ciliata 
< Fr -> 
It may be said that these experiments all give contradictory 
results, and that what holds good under one set of circum- 
stances totally fails under another. This we quite admit ; but we 
consider that it is only by going over this uncertain ground, 
and noting the contradictory results of experiments, that any 
certain knowledge can be arrived at likely to prove at length 
useful. It is singular that certain varieties should be healthy 
in one place and diseased in another ; but there can be no 
doubt that certain external circumstances affect the potato 
plant, and sometimes predispose it to take the disease ; but we 
do not think over-cultivation could do this. Continued culti- 
vation probably induces a delicate constitution, but all highly- 
bred animals (as well as plants) are delicate, and we constantly 
see this delicacy in children ; but with extra care highly-bred 
animals acquire an equal lease of life with the coarser varieties, 
as a race-horse will probably live as long as a cart-horse. 
Exhaustion by too high breeding seems to us impossible. 
When a sound variety, such as “ Sutton’s Red-skin Flourball,” 
falls in some district a ready prey to the disease, it appears to 
us that the plant has been previously thrown out of health, and 
then as a consequence succumbs with the weaker varieties ; but 
what it is that deranges its health in certain districts has, we 
think, yet to be learned. That any plant or created thing 
could be murrain-proof or disease-proof is to us most unreason- 
able, and almost synonymous with death-proof. Something we 
should think might be allowed for idiosyncrasy, or an inherent 
peculiarity of constitution, which in itself predisposes certain 
potatoes to fall a prey to the disease, whilst others can throw it 
off ; a similar state of things exists among men, for we know 
that whilst the bite of an adder or sting of a wasp will some- 
times end fatally with certain individuals, yet others may be 
subjected to these inconveniences without any very serious 
results. 
It has been suggested to us that in submitting potatoes to 
such a critical test as actual inoculation, that the experiments 
were unfair, and that the tests were analogous to inoculating a 
strong man for the small-pox, who would then be obliged to 
succumb, although under ordinary circumstances he might be 
well able to “ resist ” the disease ; but we do not think this 
argument holds good, for if there is any meaning at all in the 
words “ disease-resisting,” these potatoes or men (as the case 
may be) should be able to throw off the pest under test 
conditions. 
