The Sun.
London, England, 1846-03-13 00:00:00

THE BEAN.
(From the Inverness. Courier.)
The late disease in the potato seems not only to have
placed the agricultural, but the political, world in a quan-
dary; and politicians have been quite as much puzzled,
and as unsuccessful, in finding a substitute for Sir Ro-
bert Peel, as we agriculturists have been in finding a
substitute for the potato—and probably for the very
same reason—namely, that none of our indigenous
plants seem to have scope enough in them to fill the
place. Whether we may ultimately be more suc-
cessful than our friends the politicians, time will
try ; for my part, I have not much hope of the
event, from this very good reason, that although
we have had a little back-sliding in the potato, caused
by our own stupidity, its life and character as a species
remains unimpaired. Indeed, we have no single in-
stance, even in tradition, of a plant being lost to the
world that was found to be worth the care and trouble of
keeping. Then why should we despair of the potato ?
My object, however, is not so much to recommend a
substitute as an assistant ; for it must be confessed that
potatoes of themselves, even of the mealiest kind, are bat
watery and weak when we come to dig ditches or trench
land upon them ; and, besides, it seems almost an
anomaly in nature that the life of a warm-blooded animal
should depend upon a single plant. We have no instance
of it in nature, except among the grubs and caterpillars ;
and it is sickening to think that so many of our fellow-
creatures are reduced to such a condition.

The great defect in the potato, as food for a hard-
working man, is the undue proportion of carbonaceous,
as compared with the azotised matter it contains, which
plainly points it out as an article of diet that should
never be eaten alone, when it can be helped. This law
is, indeed, very strictly kept by all who can afford it.
But what comes of the thousands of our fellow-creatures
who have to begin and end their days on pota-
toes ?—it is worse than " making bricks without
straw." This is a very serious consideration, and
an evil not easily remedied as society is at
present constituted. For every one that is born
with a knife and fork—even a steel fork—there are
probably, three born without them ; and as cultivation
increases, the proportion between animal and farinaceous
food will further decrease, as the vegetative life which
can be produced from an acre of potatoes is so very
great when compared with an acre of land under beef
or mutton. _ _ _

T'ne natural economy of things in infant states of
society, where wild and tame animals bear a large
proportion to arable cultivation, is to run into the ex-
treme of animal food ; while, in the advanced stages,
in purely agricultural countries (where alone dense
populations can subsist), the opposite or starchy extreme
is also as naturally adopted. That this state is already
realised to a painful extent in a large section of Great
Britain and Ireland is acknowledged on all hands ; but
how to remedy the blunder is not easy to perceive. The
readiness and cheapness with which vegetable food,
sufficient to keep the vital spark glimmering in its
socket, can be raised, as compared with animal food, is
so great, that we despair of the bulk of our fellow-crea-
tures being ever again able to clutch the knife and fork.
In this state of matters it behoves us all to cast about to
see if there is nothing which can be substituted for flesh
and blood in the manufacture of this very necessary in-
gredient in our food— this raw material of the thews and
sinews of animal life.