Sometimes the blight made its appearance near high hedges, or under trees; sometimes portions of a field would be greatly affected with it before other parts were touched at all; and I have sometimes observed the very first symptoms of the disease opposite an open gateway, as if a blighting wind had rushed in, making for some distance a sort of avenue of discoloured leaves and stalks, about the width of the gateway at first, but becoming wider onwards.  When the decomposition produced by the blight was in a somewhat advanced stage, the odour from the potato field, which was very offensive, was perceptible at a considerable distance.  There may have been cases in this country in which the disease was first observed in the tubers, but they must have been rare.  It appeared in Scotland with the same symptoms as in Ireland.  A contemporary account says:  “In various parts of Scotland the potatoes have suffered fearfully from the blight.  The leaves of the plant have, generally speaking, first been affected, and then the root.”  From this mode of manifesting itself, the potato disease was commonly called in Ireland, as in Scotland, the Potato Blight.  It had other names given to it; potato murrain, cholera in the potato, and so on; but Potato Blight in Ireland, at least, was and is its all but universal name.  The whole stem soon became affected after the blight had appeared on the leaves, more especially if the weather was damp; and for some time before the period for digging out the crop had arrived, the potato fields showed nothing but rank weeds, with here and there the remains of withered-up stems—­bleached skeletons of the green healthy plants of some weeks before.

I have a vivid recollection of the blight as it appeared in the southern portion of Kildare in 1850.  The fifteenth of July in that year—­St. Swithin’s day—­was a day of clouds and lightning, of thunder and terrific rain.  It was one of those days that strike the timid with alarm and terror:  sometimes it was dark as twilight; sometimes a sudden ghastly brightness was produced by the lightning.  That the air was charged with electricity to a most unusual extent was felt by everybody.  Those who had an intimate knowledge of the various potato blights from ’45 said, “This is the beginning of the blight.”  So it was.  It is well known that after the blight of ’45 the potatoes in Ireland had scarcely shown any blossom for some years, even those unaffected by the blight, or affected by it only to a small extent; and the few exceptional blossoms which appeared produced no seed.  This feebleness of the plant was gradually disappearing, and in 1850 it was remarked as a very hopeful sign that the potatoes blossomed almost as of old.  The crop having been sown much earlier than was customary before ’45, most of the fields, on this memorable fifteenth of July, were rich with that beautiful and striking sheet of blossom, which they show when the plant is in vigorous health.  Next day—­a