28.Scotch Potato Stew.

The Colonel looked down over the bunk's side, and the men on the buffalo-skin looked up, and they all saw Kaviak sitting in bed, holding in one hand an empty muckluck by the toe, and in the other a half-eaten raw potato.

For it is this Fungus which is the cause of the potato disease; and, therefore, Peronospora infestans (doubtless of exclusively Saxon origin, though not accurately known to be so) brought about the Irish famine.

The plants afflicted with the malady are found to be infested by a mould, consisting of fine tubular filaments, termed hyphoe, which burrow through the substance of the potato plant, and appropriate to themselves the substance of their host; while, at the same time, directly or indirectly, they set up chemical changes by which even its woody framework becomes blackened, sodden, and withered.

In structure, however, the Peronospora is as much a mould as the common Penicillium; and just as the Penicillium multiplies by the breaking up of its hyphoe into separate rounded bodies, the spores; so, in the Peronospora, certain of the hyphoe grow out into the air through the interstices of the superficial cells of the potato plant, and develop spores.

The spores falling on some part of the same potato plant, or carried by the wind to another, may at once germinate, throwing out tubular prolongations which become hyphoe, and burrow into the substance of the plant attacked.

The latter penetrates into the substance of the potato plant, either by entering a stomate, or by boring through the wall of an epidermic cell, and ramifies, as a mycelium, in the substance of the plant, destroying the tissues with which it comes in contact.

However, it does not enter into my present plan to treat of the potato disease, instructively as its history bears upon that of other epidemics; and I have selected the case of the Peroganspora simply because it affords an example of an organism, which, in one stage of its existence, is truly a "Monad," indistinguishable by any important character from our Heteromita, and extraordinarily like it in some respects.

But it may be said that the Peronospora is, after all, a questionable sort of plant; that it seems to be wanting in the manufacturing power, selected as the main distinctive character of vegetable life; or, at any rate, that there is no proof that it does not get its protein matter ready made from the potato plant.

The smut of wheat is a well-known instance of such a disease, and it cannot be doubted that the grape-disease and the potato-disease fall under the same category.

It comes always from a disappointed expectation,as where the lineaments that do not disgust in the potato meet us in the human face, or even in the hippopotamus, whom accordingly Nature kindly puts out of sight.

Soon they arrived at a mud hovel, thatched with rushes, the roof sloping down so low that one could almost step on to it; it was surrounded with a ditch, and had a potato patch and a sheep enclosure; for old Jacob was a shepherd, and had a flock of sheep.

The little page was outside the coach on the step, and a fellow in the crowd aimed a potato at him, and hit him in the eye, at which the poor little wretch set up a shout The man, a great big saddler's apprentice of the town, laughed, and stooped to pick up another potato.

The little page was outside the coach on the step, and a fellow in the crowd aimed a potato at him, and hit him in the eye, at which the poor little wretch set up a shout The man, a great big saddler's apprentice of the town, laughed, and stooped to pick up another potato.

My lord jumped as briskly as a boy out of the door on his side of the coach, squeezing little Harry behind it; had hold of the potato-thrower's collar in an instant, and the next moment the brute's heels were in the air, and he fell on the stones with a thump.

One of them jeered him for his black eye, which was swelled by the potato, and another called him a cruel name, on which he and Harry fell to fisticuffs.

But I think the last would not trouble him much, for "they have no need for fine cooks who have only one potato to their dinner."

By the way, Mr. Effingham, he asked me to propose to let him take down your garden fence, in order that he may haul some manure on his potato patch, which wants it dreadfully, he says.

As for Aristabulus, who saw nothing out of rule, or contrary to his own notions of propriety, in what had passed, he hurried off to tell the barber, who was so ignorant of the first duty of his trade, that he was at liberty to pull down Mr. Effingham's fence, in order to manure his own potato patch.

The wild potato strongly resembles the species now in use in Europe, but the stem and leaf are essentially different.

If flour adulterated with potato starch be sprinkled upon black paper, and examined by a powerful lens, or a microscope, the starch may be detected by the brilliancy of its grains.

Now what aesthetic culture can you evolve from that stubbed, straggling weed you call the potato?" The discomfited pupil meekly suggested that he had been considering the dietetic, not the aesthetic properties of the despised vegetable.

I made a sweet-potato custard yesterday, and he said it was the best he ever tasted.

You had no friends; you could not have a friend unless it were some forlorn cat or dog; but you once spoke to me of your brother, who worked in a potato store, and I was astonished, and I wondered if he were as awful as you.

Just like you roast a sweet potato.