of Perthshire and Forfarshire, and these are the
two most extensive districts from which potatoes are shipped for
London. There are farmers in various parts of the country who warrant
the soundness of the potatoes they supply their customers. The
accounts of the potato crop from the Highland districts are most
favourable. I believe the fact will turn out to be this, that, like
corn, the potatoes will not only be a good, but a great crop, in all
the _true potato soils_--that is, in deep dry soils on a dry subsoil,
whether naturally so, or made so by draining--and that in all the
heavy soils, whether rich or poor, they are rotting.

A short time will put an end to all conjecture on the state of the
potato crop, and afford us facts upon which we shall be able to reason
and judge aright."

* * * * *

As the question of seed is always a most important one, whenever a new
disease or partial affection of so staple a product is discovered, it
may not be useless to note down Mr Stephens' ideas, in regard to the
supposed destruction of the vegetative principle in part of the
affected crop--

SEED POTATOES.

"I would feel no apprehension in employing such affected potatoes for
seed, next spring, as shall be preserved till that time; because I
believe it to be the case that the low temperature enfeebled the
vegetative powers of the plant so much as to disable it from throwing
off the large quantity of moisture that was presented to it; and I
therefore conclude that any rot superinduced by such causes cannot
possess a character which is hereditary. There seems no reason,
therefore, why the complaint should be propagated in future, in
circumstances favourable to vegetation; and this opinion is the more
likely to be true, that it is not inconsistent with the idea of the
disease of former years having arisen from a degenerate state of the
potato plant, since low temperature and excessive moisture were more
likely to affect a plant in a state of degeneracy than when its
vitality remains unimpaired.

There is no doubt that this affection of the potato is general, and it
is quite possible that it may yet spread. This, however, is a question
which cannot yet be solved, and certainly, so far as we know, the
Highlands, and the Orkney and Shetland Isles, have hitherto escaped.
The portion of the crop as yet actually rendered unfit for human food,
does not perhaps exceed one-fourth in parts of the coun