the conacre tenants have refused to dig the crops, and are already suffering from want of food.”  Mr. Crichton, of Somerton, Ballymote, says, the disease in his locality is not so bad as it is elsewhere, but still it is his opinion that many families about him cannot count on having a potato left in January.  Mr. Christopher Hamilton, Land Agent, of Leeson Street, writing to the Marquis of Lansdowne, says, he “ascertained by personal inspection that a great proportion of the ordinary food of the people had become useless, and that from the nature of the blight it is impossible to depend on any adequate proportion being saved.”  Mr. Hamilton praises the submission of the people under the trial.

On the 24th of November, Sir James 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