N.Z. POTATO PEST.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1379, 4 March 1912, Page 8

N.Z. POTATO PEST.

RAVAGING FRANCE-IRELAND ALARMED. An interesting story concerning a potato blight which has found its way from New Zealand to France, is told in "Frcman s Journal" (Dublin) according to the London correspondent of the Christchurch "Press." The paper in question says: A grave, menace to the potato is threatened in France. An insect which has ravaged tho potato plant in New Zealand has found its way to France, and its ravages in the province of Var are already estimated to havo been enormous. The insect is known as the Plithorimaea Solanella. It lays its eggs on the'potato, and the chrysalis eats the inside of the tuber, mining it and burrowing galleries through it. Tho holes are quickly covered with a green mossy surface and fungi, which give out a disagreeable odour, so that the cattle will not touch the contaminated plant. The insect attacks the tubers of the growing pkmt, as well as pototoes stored in cellars or pits, and it burrows through the stalk also. In the Var whole stores of potatoes have been lost. "A paper on the subject was read at tho last meeting of the Academy of Science in Paris by M. Bouvicr, Professor in the Museum of Natural History in conjunction with Jl. Picaril, Professor of Agriculture at Montpelier, and they report the presence of the disease in Paris and its neighbourhood, whither it is assumed it was brought with the supplies for the markets or in potatoes for seeds from the Var district. The extention of this potato disease would, say Messrs. Bouvier ond Picard, mean a universal disaster. As a result the Academy of Scienco decided to ask two of its members to interview the Minister for Agriculture in order to obtain assurances that the necessary steps would be taken forthwith to arrest the progress of and exterminate the insect.

" 'It is easy,' says M. Bouvior, 'to master the insect noiv. Treatment with carbonate of sulphur kills it at once. But the authorities must be under no illusion. The farmers will do nothing themselves. The obligation must bo enforced upon them of exterminating the disease. A central committee" must be formed and district officers appointed charged with the powers and duties necessary to compel the farmers to carry out the obligation that must be imposed upon them of concerted action against this great evil. " The Ministry of Agriculture must direct a vigorous campaign of extermination. It can be done easily now at little cost, in a short time. Later it may not bo possible to accomplish. Public opinion will not pardon those who, being able to stop the evil, leave it to spread. Compared with the disaster that now throatens us, the potato 'blight and the vine disease were as nothing.' "Meantime what are the English Hoard of Agriculture and the Irish Department of Agriculture doing? There are continuous imports of potatoes for food and for seed from Prance to Kngland and from England to this country, and the insect may be imported from Paris as'easily as it was brought to Paris from tho Vnr, and to the Var from Now Zealand. The disaster that MM. Bouvier and Picard fear in France would be small compared to what would befall Ireland by the destruction of its potato crop."