biglam/hmd_newspapers huggingface dataset:
The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1875-07-17

TEE POTATO CURL

There can be now no doubt, says the Journal of
Horticulture, that the new disease affecting the potato
is the recurrence of an old one known to some of us in
our young days as "the curl." This appeared towards
the end of the last century, and continued with more
or less virulence for the last five-and-twenty or thirty
years of the present one. We have a perfect recollec-
tion of the dread with which it was regarded,
and the disastrous results of its attacks. Volumes
were written upon it by the most noted agriculturists
and gardeners of the day, from A. Young and T. A.
Knight downward, and so serious was it that it en-
gaged the attention of the most eminent scientific and
practical men of the period. Its origin and its cure
alike baffled the ingenuity of all who turned their at-
tention to it, till at last it died out, and for forty or
more years it has not been heard of it, till two years
ago it made its appearance in the new seeding varie-
ties of American potatoes after they had been grown
one season in this country. This fact singularly cor-
responds with what we find in some of the early
accounts of the disease. Arthur Young says that of
potatoes raised from seed one plant in thirty will be
curled, and if propagated will retain this quality; and
Dr. Anderson, a great authority of the period, states
in the Bath papers that a large field planted with
potatoes the third year from seed had more than half
the plants curled, while another field near it, planted
with sets which never, as far as he knew, were pro-
duced from seed, had scarcely one plant curled in the
whole field. There will no doubt be many conjectures
as to the origin and cause of this disease, some being
the old ones revived; and there will also be as many
suggestions for a cure brought forward now as were
formerly; but while others may be investigating and
some dreaming as to these, our advice is to be wise in
time, and utterly to destroy every variety and every
crop in which it has made its appearance; for our
readers may rest assured it is a far more serious matter
than some of our contemporaries who have treated on
the subject seem to think.