Murray, M.D., published a remarkable
letter, headed "Surgery _versus_ Medicine," in which, I believe, he came
as near the immediate cause of the disease as any writer who has dealt
with the subject. He attributes it to electrical agency. "During the
last season," he writes, "the clouds were charged with excessive
electricity, and yet there was little or no thunder to draw off that
excess from the atmosphere. In the damp and variable autumn this
surcharge of electrical matter was attracted by the moist, succulent,
and pointed leaves of the potato." As medicine is found to be useless
for the disease, he recommends the use of the knife to cut away the
diseased parts, and to keep the sound portions on shelves.

The clergy of every denomination came forward with a zeal and charity
worthy of their sacred calling. Out of hundreds of letters written by
them, I cannot deny myself the pleasure of making a few extracts. The
Rev. Mr. Killen, Rector of Tyrrilla, Co. Down, writes: "This is the
famous potato-growing district. One-third of the crop is already
affected, both in the pits and those in the ground." The Rev. Mr.
M'Keon, of Drumlish, in his letter to the Mansion House Committee, says:
"The people must starve in summer, _having paid their rents by selling
their oats_; their rents being rigorously exacted on the Granard and
Lorton estates." The Rev. James M'Hall, of Hollymount, Mayo, mentions
the startling fact, that a poor man in his neighbourhood having opened a
pit, where he had stored six barrels of potatoes, of sixty-four stone
each, _found he had not one stone of sound potatoes_! The Rev. John
Stuart, Presbyterian minister in Antrim, declares that fully one-half of
the crop is lost in his district. He adds: "Some have tried lime dust,
and pits aired with tiles, and in a few days have found a mass of
rottenness." The Rev. Mr. Waldron, Parish Priest of Cong, writes, that
he had examined the crop in every village in his parish, and reports
that more than one-half of it is lost on sound lands, above
three-fourths on others. "The panic," he continues, "which at first took
the people has lately subsided into _silent despair and hopelessness_."
A Protestant clergyman in Mayo, who had thirty men digging his potatoes,
of the species called Peelers, "thinks they did not dig as much sound
potatoes as two men would do in a sound year." The Rev. Mr. Cantwell, of
Kilfeacle, makes the suggestive announcement that "parents are already