The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1872-08-24 00:00:00

A POTATO FAMINE.

The following letter which has been sent to The
Times for publication, will be read with great interest
ust now :
"

Wears threatened with an &Alteration of the potato crop ;
at any rate so far as slits year is concerned. Yesterday I
carefully examined a number of fields iu the potato growing
district around Long Sutton, in Lincoleshire, and found that,
already, three-fourth of the tubers by weignti are diseased,
while the misoSiet is still in sc•lve progress. The testimony of
many et °a era 'tithe nelg`lbourbool is that scarcely ally sound
potat..es can be discovnred thronghont whole fields, and the
general anxiety is to know, not what may be the probable
amount of •• ware " for the mai kit, but whether tough
re lace w ill he forthcoming as • trek' for !rat year. I
have all the slightest dount that the suite condition of Om
crop prevails over the entire tract of potato country between
Boston and Wisbeach, and that the yield, if atiWiing at all,
can lie little more than a return of the seed planted. The
consternation ainoog the farmers, who pay high rents, and
apply to their land very large quantities of ari Octal inmure,
may he im,gined, seeing that the toucan scarcely be under
£l6 or pertmpe £2O per acre.
Inseam appears to have smitten the crop in all parts of
the kingdom . and it is desirable that accurat- rep rts as
to the present state of the tilher should be forthcoming
from File, Forfar, Perth, Ross, Lanark, Comberlagol,
Lanc3shire
,Cheshire Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Cambridge-
shire, Essex, Staffordshire, Went, Somerset, and Devon.
shire, counties growing the largest acreages In Great
Britain, and also from all the provinces of Ireland. For if
the saleable produce of the entire potato crop of the Pritieh
Isles is all but destroyed, the loss weans something like
1,630,0 0 acres (besides gardens; at, say, 41 tons per acre,
anionnting to 7,335,000 tons, which, at £4 per ton, comes to
V.9,340,i,00, or the value of, say, ten million quarters of
wheat.—l have the honour to he, .bc.,
JOHN ALGERNON CLARKE
Central Chamber of Agriculture, Salisbury Hotel,
Fleet-street, It C , Aug. 20.

BLACK DIAMONDB.—The chemical difference
between the Diamond and Coal is so little, that Coal
may be regarded as a foim of Carbon approximating to
the Diamond. The difference in value between the
two substances, until lately, was considerable; but
now the price of Coal is rising at such a rate, that? in
the quality of precious stone also, Coals are rapidly
getting approximated to Diamonda.—Puscn.

THE FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE.
Mr. Thomas Baldwin, of the Albert Model Farm,
Glasnerin, Dublin, has sent the following interesting
letter to The Times for publication •
Fat and Mouth disease has spread so raphily ant caused
such heavy tomes ilia smson as to cause alarm among tee
owners of stock.

You have of late devoted so much space to the Miami ffs
of the disease that I venture to address to you a few onset.-
'rations on the suhject tine of try aided.' is to fix attention
on the circunistanee that while it is admitted on all hands
that this rathe'y inflicts an enormous hies on the agricul-
tural inlerest,.l the comery, no well directed effort is made
investi:nte the lawn by which it is propagated.

-
One of the lea,leg agricultural authorities has jut rro
preluded the notion that if foot-an.t.mou is disease were
stamped not" 11 sectild noon break out aunt 1. My
own ind=ocretatt ot,sereations Indnee see to say that
this view of the cue is not tenahlf . As it is enit rtsined
by many. roes-ins, and as a per :latent agitatiou, cslcalated
to deceive in
the ownrro of stock and the pubile, is
based upon it. I Slits berg) to state the ground on
which my opinion is founded. lo the trot place it Is Im-
portant to bear in mind that this to no. an India nous
disease, that it wu Imp,rted from the continent of Europe
iute the south of Ireland, ;Ounce it passed Into England :
and that It has never eh ce been stamped out" lan, :Ors,
there are men who held the 4' pi ' that the &sease is
espaqe of ',eine develop.' in these Islands spontaneously.
This opinion does not accord with careful oliserv.dion. I
know districts in Ireland' in which it has never appsarcel,
ard these happen to be the very places where cattle receive
the we rat treatment and where it would be most liabbs to
praluced if capable of spontaneous; generation. N.,v,
the disease being of foreign °thin rind net capable oft spon-
taneous Reiteration, it Is manifest that it we could place
such restrictions on our cattle trade for a 'Mated period
as would stamp out the disease it would not and could not
appear again unless imported afresh. It is well known that
the cattle plague realm' ions clinched this dhease. had the
cnontry been competed to continue those restrictions much
bineer foot and mouth disease you'd have dissi poured
altogether. Reimpose those rearictbms to-morrow, and you
will effectually "stamp out" this disease. _

Many persons, while aiireeing with tee thu far, would
add that as the reimportation of the dis.roo is inevitable,
awl as it propagates itself in a way which baffles alike scien-
tific skill and praetimil experience, it could to got rid of
after inch reimportatim only 11 the reimposition of these
restrictions.

I must admit, in common with all persona who have had
extensive experience of this disease, that it has often ap-
p. ared in cattle under my direction in a way which corn.
pt tely puzzled me. But rceent ob,ervations nut experi-
ments, undertaken specially in the hope of throwing light
on the nature of the disease, have en abhol me to understand
what need to appear ruysterions I shall elle an illustra-
tion. The noth al is very generally entertained that the
diseaae Is carded from farm to farm through the air. I
shall briefly state a few faces which show that if carried
at all in the air, the range of Its power of transmissi u is
very small. _ -

. -
I have at Glasnevin, for educational purposes, three farms '
—one of 51 acres, one of 25 acres, and one of 1,0 acres ; each
of which is worked independently of the others. I have
taken all possible precautions, to protect the animals on
these several forms from infectious diseases For ex-
ample, where a piece of pasture adjoins the public road I
have erected barricades to prevent the cattle from coming
into contact with diseased animals which may pass along
this road. Notwithstanding these precautions, arid
that no slew purchase had been aside for months, foot and-
mouth disease appeared last month hi ant of the animals
on the 240-acre farm. It seemed to some of my neighbours
and pupils to he a case of spontaneous generation. Ilut it was
easy to trace the outbreak to an infected lot of cattle on the
opposite Bile of theroad. Those animals had access too brook
which supplies water to the cattle on our 140 acre farm As
soon as the disease broke out I took steps for preventing inter-
',urge between this farm ann the two am tier forms I further
directed that as soon as an animal should show any signs of
disorder it should he withdrawn from the herd and planed in
an hospital. On thi. farm them are 53 head of cattle of all
, ages Of these 22 got the disease, and it has alreody dis-
appeared. On the 25 acre farm there are tea mikh cows and
two calves These animals gene-d in a field -h is within
28 yards of the field of the 140-acre ferns iu which tile dis-
ease broke out, and within 7.1 yards of the shed used as I a
hospital, yet none of these got the disease. .

Last year also I had this disease at Glasnevin. It ap-
peared first on the 145 acre farm and in a cow bought at the
I.lr of Droghe a, where she came into contact with diseased
animals. Last year it spread to the 25 acre farm, and on
diligent Inquiry I WM able to trace the transmitsion of the
infection to the use of a bucket taken by a thoughtless boy
from the discus, d to the healthy cattle.
These facts show the value of isolation as well as the
importance of preventing the movement of cattle during
the prevalence of foot and mouth disease The same
holds good with regard to that insidious plague pleuro-
pneumonia. Many stockowners are ignorant of the nature
of infection, and do not understand the advantage of
Imposing restrictions on the movertomt of cattle. The
best way of overcoming their prejudices, and of ar-
riving at a knowledge of the principles by which legis-
lation on these infectious diseases ought to be governed.
Is by Instituting a rigid Inquiry into the mode by
which they are propagated. It the initiative were taken
by any central competent body, such as the Royal Agri-
cult urdSociety, I fully believe the hurled gentry and farmers
I would contri Mate funds to prosecute the inquiry I also feel
assured that the st, ck owners of Imhof', who are a wealthy
class, %rid miff r from i u'ect Ins diseasesass annual lots finial
to the whole of the local taxatien of their country, would not
be slow In coming forward to support such an effort to serve
them.