NEW ZEALAND POTATO PEST

Press, Volume LXVIII, Issue 14290, 28 February 1912, Page 5

NEW ZEALAND POTATO PEST

I RAVAGING FRA&GE. j IRELAND ALARMED. j (r»OM OUR OWMCOniaPOKSIKT.*) LONDON, January 19. "Freeman's Journal" (Dublin) pubj lishes an interesting story concerning j a potato blight which has found its j way from New Zealand to France, and j the Irish authorities are alarmed lest I the insect should continue its ravages | in the Emerald Isle. Tho paper says:—■ "A grave menace to the potato in reported from France. An insect which

lias ravaged the potato plant in New Zealand has found its way to Franco, and its ravages in the province of Var arc already estimated to have been enormous. The insect is known as tho ■phthorimipa Solanella It lays its eggs on the potato, and the chrysalis eats the inside of tho tuber, mining it and burrowing galleries through it. Tho holes are quickly covered with a green mossy surface and fungi., which give out a disagreeable odour, So that the cattle will not touch the contaminated plant. The insect attacks tho tubers of tho growing plant, as well as potatoes stored in cellars or pits, and it burrows through the- stalk also. In tho Var ithole stores of potatoos have been lost.

"A paper on the subject was read at the, last meeting of the Academy of Science in Paris by M. Bouvier. Professor in tho Museum of Natural History, in conjunction with M Picard, Professor of Agriculture it Montpelier, and they report the presence of the disease, in Paris and its neighbourhood, whither it is assumed it was brought with the supplies for the markets or in potatoes for seeds from the Var district. The extention of this i'otato disease would, say Messrs Bouvier and Picard, mean a universal disaster. As a result iln> Academy of Science decided to ask two of its members to interview the Minister of Agriculture in order to obtain assurances that the necessary steps would be taken forthwith to arrest the progress of and exterminate the insect.

■' 'It is easy,' says M. Bouvier, 'to master the insect now. Treatment with carbonate of sulphur kills it at once. But tho authorities must bo linger no illusion. Tho farmers will do nothing themselves. The obligation must be enforced upon them of exterminating tho disease. A central committee must be formed and district officers appointed charged with the powers and duties necessary to compel the farmers to carry out the obligation that must bo imposed upon them of concerted action against this great evil.

"'The Ministry of Agriculture mast direct a vigorous campaign of extermination. It can bo done easily now at little cost, in a short time. Later it may not bo possible to accomplish. Public opinion will not pardon those who, being able to stop the evil, leavu it to spread. Compared with the disaster that now threatens us, tho potato blight and the vine disease were as nothing.'

"Meantime what aro the English Board of Agriculture and the Irish Department ot><\<jriciilturo doing? There are continuous imports of potatoes for food and for seed from France to England and from England to this country, and the insect may bo imported from Paris as easily as it was brought to Paris from the Var, and to the Var from New Zealand. The disaster that MM. Bouvier and Picard fear in France would be small compared to what would befall Ireland by the destruction of its potato crop."