This opinion as to fogs preceding or accompanying the potato blight was corroborated from various parts of the United Kingdom.  A correspondent of the Gardener’s Chronicle, under date 14th Nov., 1846, writes:  “In the early part of August, 1846, there was not a diseased potato in the North Riding of Yorkshire.  Late in August, I think the 25th, a very thick dense fog prevailed.  The air was not, however, at all chill.  The heat and closeness was most oppressive.  This continued all night, and anything similar to it I never before saw, with so high a temperature.  It occurred also on the following night. On the morning after the fog, the whole of the potato fields had precisely the disorganized appearance they have after a night’s frost.  They soon became black, and the disease followed in a very few days.”

In the Gardener’s Chronicle of the 5th of September, it is mentioned that shortly before, and about the time the disease appeared at Aberdeen, “there was a succession of unusually dense fogs, followed by great warmth.”

In one of the Orkney Islands it was remarked by a farmer that “a very dense fog rested in patches on certain parts of the island; at times it was so defined, that the observer could point out the exact measure of ground over which it rested.  It hung low, and had the appearance of a light powdering of snow.  In passing, it fell down on his small farm, and he smelt it very unpleasant, exactly like, he says, the bilge water of a ship—­a sulphurous sort of stench.  After the wind rose and cleared off those clouds or lumps of fog, there remained on the grass over which they had hung, as well as on the potato shaws, [stalks,] an appearance of grey dew or hoar frost.  The next morning he noticed the leaves of his potatoes slightly spotted ...  Before ten days, not a shaw was in his potato patch more than if it had been a bare fallow ... Everywhere through the island, the disease, after the fog, began in spots and corners of fields, and spread more slowly over all.”—­Observations on the probable cause of the Failure of the Potato Crop, by David Milne, Esq., p. 37.  Halliday Pamphlets, vol. 1, 994.

[115] See post, p. 165.

[116] Public Letter of 25th of August.

[117] In the debate on the “Fever (Ireland) Bill,” on the 18th of March, Mr. Scrope said, “He must observe that he held to the opinion that the first resource for the people of Ireland which should have been looked to, on the failure of the potato crop, should have been the oats which they themselves had grown by the side of their potatoes, and that the burthen should have been thrown upon the Unions of taking care that a sufficient stock of those oats should have been stored to provide against necessity.”