POTATO BLIGHT.

Gisborne Times, Volume XVIII, Issue 1428, 12 April 1905, Page 1

POTATO BLIGHT.

((To the Editor Gisborne .Times.) Sir,—On the 7th inat. Mr Jne. Mullooly iSi..reporfes in your-.i. contemporary as furnishing aa jp’otratd'bbght which ho witnessacTAiVireland sixty ycar3 ago. I too appearance in fcbe County Westmeath; A morning’s sun in the month of August, 1846, revealed to the ever hopeful Irishman a strange transformation which took place in the appearance of his beloved potato crop. A destroying angel—a demon of a blighting wind —had done the deed, and in one night. In a day or two the stench of that Paradise of Erin—the potato fields—so lovely, so beloved, and rightly so—was positively unbearable. A brown spot microsoopic at first, spread over the foliage, and with certain and rapid advance took possession of all that was above and below ground. Decomposition set in and the food of some seven millions of people was struck from their lips. I have seen people boiljthese potatoos, the smell was intensified a hundredfold : the poor dear pigs would not even nose the nauseating moss, however daintily flavored with milk and oatmeal. I have seen my mother prepare the darliDg Hurrish’s repast—of no avail. He would die sooner than pollute his sensitive palate with suoh an abominable dish. That people contracted disease from inhaling the aroma of putrid potatoes—as Mr Jas. Mullooly says—is not correct. In his history of Ireland, W. E. Collier, L.L.D., on page 249, says: “ The wet summer of 1845 produced a disease which rotted immense quantities of the potatoes, on which the Irish peasant mainly depended for food. This cansed famine, and a pestilence of fever followed. The population was at this period reduced by 2,000,000.” It will be observed that famine produced the disease which Mr Mullooly terms a cholera. I have seen several poor creatures in Westmeath whose bodies were skin and bone so terrible was the state of the country at that time. From the year 1817 to 1839 there had been repeated failures of r the potato crops in Ireland, some partial, and some more general in their destruction ; BDd each failure waß attended with the invariable results—famine and pestilence. Those whom the hunger spared the typhus smote, and the red hue of the rural graveyard gave fatal evidence of the consequences of potato blight. In 1882 an abundant harvest was gathered in and stored ; but the potato rotted in the pits on .account of the wetness of the growing season, and it was not until an advanced period of the year that the unhappy people wero conscious of the calamity that had befallen them. We in this country have had a very wet early season ; may not this have had an effect on our own crop, which we now complain of ? In the year 1847 the number of persbns in receipt of daily rations of food was 3,000,000. The estimated cost of relief in food was £3, 000,000 under the Temporary Relief Act. I beg to suggest the following remedy tried with good effects in Ireland : A supply of fresh ssed and ohange of tillage area. —I am, etc., Geo. Hy. Wilson.