[110] This estimate is said to have been compiled from the best available sources for Thom’s Almanac and Directory for 1847.  The quantity of potatoes in each of the four Provinces, and their probable value were: 

Ulster,    352.665 acres, valued at  L4,457,562
Munster,   460,630  "       "         6,030,739 10s. 
Leinster,  217,854  "       "         2,814,150
Connaught, 206,292  "       "         2,645,468
-------                    ---------
1,237,441                  L15,947,919 10s.

[111] Letters on the state of Ireland, by the Earl of Rosse:  London, 1847. Halliday Pamphlets, vol. 1993.  These letters were originally sent to the Times, but that journal having refused them insertion, the noble author published them in a pamphlet.  The Rev. Theobald Mathew said, I do not know on what authority, that two millions of acres of potatoes were irrevocably lost, being worth to those who raised them L20 an acre.  This estimate would make the loss L40,000,000.

[112] Mayne on the Potato Failure.  The potato crop, for the most part, continued to look well up to the end of July, but the blight had appeared, in the most decided way, during the first half of that month, although not then very apparent to a casual observer.  Mr. Mayne, like many persons at the time, attributed the blight to an insect which some called Aphis Vastator, others Thrips minutissima.  There was a glass case in the Dublin Exhibition of 1853, showing this insect feeding on the leaves and stalks of the potato plant.  Mr. Mayne and those who agreed with him, seem, in this instance, to have mistaken cause for effect.  Indeed the insect, it would appear, was a natural parasite of the potato, and some observers have gone so far as to assert that the Aphis Vastator abounded more on healthy plants than upon those affected with the blight.

[113] Letter to the Duke of Leinster quoted in Irish Census for 1851.  M. Zander, of Boitzenberg, in Prussia, published, about this time, a method by which full sized potatoes could be produced in one year from the seed, and he further stated that the seedlings so produced had resisted the blight.  The old idea was, that it took three years to produce full-sized potatoes from the seed.  M. Zander’s method was tried in various parts of Ireland and England, its chief peculiarity being that the seed was sown on a light hot bed, and the plants so produced were transferred to the ground in which they were to produce the crop.  Full-sized potatoes were the result, each plant producing, on an average, 1-1/2 lbs. of potatoes, or rather more than 29 tons to the Irish acre.  This method appeared satisfactory to those who interested themselves about it, but it does not seem to have been followed up.

[114] Proceedings of the Royal Dublin Society.