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notion of what was causing the blight. Various theories were advanced. It was said that the potatoes had been damaged by “static electricity” from the air, and it was suggested that puffs of steam from passing locomotives—recently introduced in Ireland—might be to blame. One theory held that the disease was caused by “mortiferous vapours” rising from “blind volcanoes” in the interior of the earth, and another school of thought held that the villain was guano manure, made from the droppings of seagulls, that was used as fertilizer in some areas. Did it come from the air, the earth, from the water? From County Clare came a report that one section of a field, where clothes had been laid out to dry, had escaped the blight. “This,” said a local expert, “proves that the blow came from the air.” Dr. Lindley’s own analysis was no more helpful. He declared that the potatoes were suffering from “dropsy”—a human disease had invaded the plant kingdom. And while all this discussion was going on, the disease spread at a rampage, in regions wet and arid, from sheltered valleys to the highest mountainside. “Alarm” became terror.
    A scientific commission was dispatched from London to Dublin, and presently the commissioners had drawn up a report: “Advice Concerning the Potato Crop to the Farmers and Peasantry of Ireland.” The advice was that the Irish farmer should dry his potatoes in the sun, then “mark out on the ground a space six feet wide and as long as you please. Dig a shallow trench two feet wide all roundand throw the mould upon the space, then level it and cover it with a floor of turf sods set on their edges.” On top of this was to be sifted “packing stuff,” made by “mixing a barrel of freshly burnt unslaked lime, broken into pieces as large as marbles, with two barrels of sand or earth, or by mixing equal parts of burnt turf and dry sawdust.” If these preliminaries were not complicated enough, the detailed and lengthy instructions that followed were downright unintelligible—as the commissioners seemed to realize, for their report concluded: “If you do not understand this, ask your landlord or Parish priest to explain its meaning.” The landlord to ask, meanwhile, was in most cases an absentee, miles across the sea in England.
    And even those farmers who did understand the commissioners’ recommendations found the procedure did absolutely no good at all. Next came instructions on how to prepare diseased potatoes for eating. The Irish peasant was to provide himself with a grater, a linen cloth, a hair sieve or cloth strainer, a pail or tub or two of water, and a griddle. Potatoes were then to be finely grated into the tubs, washed, strained; then the process was to be repeated and the resulting black pulp was to be dried in the griddle over a slow fire. The result, the commissioners said, was starch, and good bread could be made out of it. “There will,” the report noted, “be of course a good deal of trouble in all we have recommended, and perhaps you will not succeed very well at first.” The report closed on a note of chauvinism, urging the Irish to keep a stiff upper lip through it all. “We are confident all true Irishmen will exert themselves, and never let it be said that in Ireland the inhabitants wanted courage to meet difficulties against which other nations are successfully struggling.”
    As word of Ireland’s peril spread, other suggestions poured in from well-meaning, if sometimes wild-eyed, authorities. One suggestion was that rotted potatoes should be baked—in primitive Irish cabins—at a temperature of 180 degrees Fahrenheit foreighteen to twenty minutes, or until “blackish matter” with a foul smell came oozing out in oily gobbets. The potatoes could then, it was claimed, be peeled and would be found sweet and white again. The