January 15. 
COUNTRY GENTLEMAN’S COMPANION. 
281 
eventually, like other iai])racticable theories, the matter 
I will drop. 
Having e.xtended the above remarks to a greater 
length than 1 intended, 1 have only room to observe, 
that in neighbourhoods like this, where Orcharding 
forms an im])ortant item in the general cultivation of a 
district, great diversities of soil are occasionally seen 
under fruit crops ;—from the white, chalky soil of steep 
hill sides, to the black, peaty moss of the marsh ; and, in 
some places, ground so stony is planted with fruit-trees, 
that the stones might bo shovelled off in cart loads per 
rod. Some discretion is necessarily exercised in planting 
; these extremes; but the number, and extent of Orchards 
is so great, that they form, in some jtarishes, one-tenth of 
the entire area. Even in the one I write from, it is 
over one-twelfth ; and when it is to be considered that 
Hops form an item generally as large, or larger, the 
I advocates of spade cultivation will see that their views 
are carried out here to some extent, as both crops are 
tilled by hand. J. Robson. 
; IS THE POTATO MURRAIN INELUENCED 
BY FROST ? 
' A CIRCUMSTANCE whicli I observcd, this last autumn, of the 
, effect of frost upon Potatoes is, perhaps, worth mentioning. 
I A plot of about ten or twelve rows was planted on a border 
j in front of a wall with a south-east aspect. On the west 
side of the plot was a rustic fence, on which a Boursault 
Rose was twined. Some of the young shoots of the sum¬ 
mer’s growth stretched over the tops of the Potatoes in the 
two drills nearest the fence. On the 7th of September a 
frost, severe for the season, was experienced here, and the 
leaves of the Potatoes, almost everywhere, were, less or more, 
affected by it. As the plot of which I have been speaking 
was exposed to the hist bright rays of the rising sun, it 
suffered more on that account than any other which I had 
eitlier in garden .or held. I found tlie tops very much 
destroyed, except the two drills over which the straggling 
shoots of the Rose stretched, which were entirely untouched, 
not the slightest appearance of frost being visible on their 
leaves. I was, in the hrst instance, very much surprised to 
see how complete a protection had been afforded by a few 
stray twigs, certainly nothing equal to what would have been 
given by a net. 
The frosted Potato tops were all dead in less than three 
weeks, and I ordered the plot to be lifted. On digging, the 
Potatoes where the tops were destroyed by frost were a mass 
of disease, scarcely one tuber of any size being sound ; whilst 
in the two drills unaffected by frost all the tubers were 
sound and good. There being there not one diseased. 
Now, all the plot was of one kind of Potatoes, planted on 
the same day, in tlie same soil and aspect, under the same 
cultivation, and grown in the same conditions; and where 
frost did its work, there was disease, and there only. 
I had a second plot, growing in another part of the 
garden, composed of two sorts of Kidneys : one of them was 
of the same kind with that in the first plot. This second 
plot was so far shaded from the morning sun by a wall, a 
row of dwarf apple trees, and the dwelling-house behind all, 
and it was scarcely touched with frost. The Potatoes of 
this second plot were dug on the same day with those of 
the first, and there were a few—a very few—tainted tubers; 
not, perhaps, one in fifty. We have thus a very distinct 
example of disease in Potatoes following frost. Was the 
disease, in this case, the ejf'eet of frost ? Did frost, I mean, 
produce the disease? Or what arc we to make of this fact? 
i If we were to come to the conclusion that the disease, in 
I this instance, was an effect of the destruction of the tops 
! by frost (which, however, I by no means assert), ive shall 
I have an explanation, so far as regards the mere fact, of one 
I way in which this formidable disease is engendered. I 
have never seen diseased tubers except where the leaves and 
haulm had been previously affected, so that we have been 
accustomed to hold that the disease appears first in the tops, 
and descends to the tubers; and the people who have cut 
off the haulm by the ground on the first appearance of 
affection in the leaf have afterwards dug the tubers <juite 
round. It has also been observed, that to neglect this 
notice fur two or three days has allowed the disease to 
develope in the tuber. So far as I have observed, the first 
appearance of disease in the leaf is remarkably like what we 
.call a touch of frost, if it be not pj'oduced by it; the i)oiuts 
and edges of the leaf, or the \vhole leaf, as it may happen, 
being destroyed just as it would be by frost, less or more. 
There is one apparent ditliculty in the way of such an 
explanation, and that is, that the disease is often visible so 
early in the season that one w'ould say it is absolutely im¬ 
possible that frost could have occurred. l^erhaps this 
diffcnlty is more seeming than real. It ought to be con¬ 
sidered, that a plant’s power of resistance of cold is not a 
constant and absolute measure; its power of resistance will 
depend largely upon the manner of its growtli and its ex¬ 
posure. Take even a hardy jdant, and grow it in a warm 
house, and turn it out suddenly into the open air, and you 
may find in a day or two that its leaves have got frost¬ 
bitten in summer. It has not requiied what we call frost to 
do this: a temperature, which would have been quite con¬ 
genial to it in other circumstances of growth, has proved too 
cold for it, and effected wdiat even frosts, had it been other¬ 
wise ti’eated, would not have done. The haulm of a Potato, 
late planted, will develope more rajiidly than one earlier 
planted, and will be softer, and more tender, and more 
easily damaged. I believe this to be one part of the secret 
of the advantage of early planting ; you have a more healthy 
lop, which will not only perform its functions better, but be 
callable of offering a greater measure of resistance to cold. 
Some two or three years ago, when my Potatoes w'ere w'ell 
above ground, I discovered two paper-bags with half-a-dozen 
tubers in each, which I had carefully hrid aside for planting, 
and had forgotten. The tubers had shoots six inches long. 
I planted them carefully as they were, and in two or three days 
they were above ground, and in as many weeks had made 
as much top growth as their more early-planted neighbours. 
They w'ere, however, first destroyed by the disease, and 
their tubers in a woi’se state by far than any other lot in the 
garden. Now this illustration may be brought to bear upon 
tliose cases of disease in July or early part of August. At 
this season, does it not come after wet and w'arm weather, 
and particularly after thunder-storms? Suppose the leaf 
and haulm then in a growing state, growth will be rapid, 
and the produce soft: wo call this forcing weather, and 
such is its effect on all vegetable formations. At such times, 
it is by no means uncommon to have a rapid fall of tempe¬ 
rature which, without coming very lowq may yet be too low' 
for a grow'th which has been rapidly developed, and is cor¬ 
respondingly weak, and produce precisely the same effect as 
frost w'ould be required to do in other conditions. I have 
further observed, this season, that there has been some¬ 
thing uncommonly like a gradation of disease side by side 
with the visitations of frost to which luy Potatoes have been 
subjected. A lot of Wheeler’s Prince of Kales (a round, 
w'hite, early) was left in the ground till the middle of 
September; they w'ere quite ripe before the frost of the 
7tb, and the haulm, being dead, could not, of course, be 
touched by it. The tubers here were all sound, without one 
instance of a bad one. The Kidney slightly touched, but 
which were not decayed in the haulm, when dug had, 
say, one in fifty tubers diseased. Potatoes iii a field, left 
later, which got more frost, had about one-tenth diseased. 
Flukes dug last in the same field, and which had got more 
frost than any others, were still worse. About the Flukes 
I have something more to say, and it bears upon our topic. 
The Flukes made a bad start in the spring; indeed, many 
sets never sprung at all, and great iiart of those which came 
above ground did not appear before July. I rather think 
that the seed had got slightly frosted, which had weakened 
its pow'ers in many instances, and destroyed them alto¬ 
gether in others. After getting above ground, the growth 
of the haulm was very rapid, and it could not be in the 
same condition for meeting frost as if it had grown from 
the early jiart of May. At all events, the Flukes w'ere the 
worst lot in the field. Dean’s Seedling, planted along side 
of them, on the same day, came better away, and, when dug 
at the same time, were in a much better condition. In 
another field, about half-an-acre were left till the second 
week in October, by which time there had been frosts in- 
