Oldalképek
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Now, all these new or derivative plants | ter blossoms of the same decayed and are of course female, because in fact they decrepit stock-the very seedlings in are part and parcel of the one original old turn start in life with decayed constituplant that came first like a new William tions, due to so much breeding in and in, the Conqueror to England; and no male and lack the vigor and vitality of true flower of the river-weed has ever yet been young blood. The philosophic poet of observed by botanists in any part of this the "Bab Ballads warns "elderly men of isle of Britain. Thousands and thousands the bachelor crew that if they insist upon of specimens have been carefully exam- committing matrimony late in life, "their ined, but not a male blossom has ever babes will be elderly, elderly too.' That been discovered here. Consequently, the is just what has happened to the poor weed has never set seed, and never pro- potato. For lack of frequent healthy crossduced any true seedlings; the whole massing, the entire vitality of the race has been of waving green foliage that now covers slowly dissipated; the entire stock has the beds of so many streams from Caith-grown old together, and we stand now face ness to Cornwall belongs in the last resort to face with the awful possibility of a poto a single very big and wandering plant, tatoless universe. just as truly as all the branches of an oak or a spreading ivy-bush belong to the same single individual.

But why can't we go back to the fountain-head once more, and start afresh with brand-new potatoes from their native forest? Ay, there's the rub, as Hamlet justly puts it. We can't discover the fountain-head any longer. Nobody knows where the potato comes from; the native forest itself is dead. The aboriginal wild potato seems as extinct in our day the wide world over as the dodo or the deinotherium.

Similarly with what we call varieties or kinds in roses or strawberries. A gardener produces from seed a particular rose-bush, with certain attractive individual features, which belong as distinctively to that particular bush as her beauty belongs to a particular woman. If he were to grow seedlings from it again, they might not "come true," as gardeners put it; or, This is often the way with important in other words, they might exhibit individ-food-plants. Nobody can trace with cerual traits of their own, different from the tainty the ancestor of wheat or of Indian traits so much admired in their respected corn, the primitive father of the plantain mother. So, to avoid that contingency, or of the banana. The fact is, whenever a the gardener makes no seedlings from his plant lays by these rich stores of material bush; he takes advantage of this curious for its own use, either as seed or root or power of multiplying the self-same indi- bulb or tuber, man, greedy man, is sure to vidual by mere division without any cross divert it to his own purposes, as ruthlessly of fresh blood, and "takes cuttings." The as he robs the bees of their honey and the flowers of these of course remain always cows of the milk they have prepared for the same, exactly as they would have done their calves in their own udders. Every had the branches been left upon the tree important human foodstuff is essentially that bore them. With strawberries, in at bottom a seed or a tuber; eggs in the like manner, when the gardener has once animal world answering to the one, and got a good stock from seed, he cultivates fatted beasts answering roughly to the the runners, which are only, after all, long, other. Wheat, barley, Indian corn, peas, naked branches, that root and leaf at defi- beans, dates, and cocoanuts are instances nite distances. In every case you can in the first direction; potatoes, turnips, only produce a truly new individual by yam, beetroot, are instances in the second. genuine wedlock-by crossing and seeding; and, though the life of the old, muchsubdivided plant may continue for many, many years in special circumstances, there comes nevertheless a time at last when all its force is utterly épuisé, and it must needs die like the old, old oak, or the cedar that numbers a hundred centuries.

From the very first moment, then, that the ancestral potato began to lay up starches and foodstuffs for itself in its own underground tissues, we may be perfectly sure that rodents, monkeys, and other animal enemies did their level best to circumvent its innocent design by digging them up and incontinently eating them. Presently, man, as the Red Indian, arrived upon the scene, and subjected the incipient and starchy potato to some rude cultivation. In one way he was less destructive, no doubt, than the rodents and themselves mere sis-monkeys who had gone before him, be

So now see the plight to which in the case of our chief vegetable we have unconsciously reduced ourselves. We have allowed our one potato-plant to grow so old that even when we take seedlings from two of its flowers

[ocr errors]

cause, while he rooted up and grubbed but, sooner or later, die it must, of pure out more indefatigably than they, he kept épuisement, like the last of the Tasmani a little back for "seed" for the future. He ans on Norfolk Island. It is a used-up cut up his potato into many small pieces race, and nothing on earth will save it. with an "eye" in each, the eye being in It is worse off even than the Romans of fact an undeveloped leaf-bud, whence the decadence or the moribund Byzanbranches would issue in another season. tines, who could stil! intermarry with the Thus he ensured in some way the contin- fresh young stock of Goth or Slavonian. uance of the plant; but, alas! he only For it has no chance of crossing left to cared for his own squaws and papooses in reinvigorate its blood. It becomes a prey the immediate future, and took no thought to ten thousand diseases, from the fungus for the convenience of the intrusive white that caused the Irish famine to the deman in this then remote nineteenth cen- vouring flood of the Colorado beetle. tury. And considering how little the white man thought of his convenience some ages later, perhaps his remissness in this respect is not to be wondered at.

At any rate, what the Red Indian seems to have done was just this: as in almost every other case of primitive agriculture, he brought the wild plant into cultivation, and improved largely its special yield; but in so doing he destroyed its native type altogether. Whether he grubbed up all the wild ones and ate them on the spot, or whether he merely encroached upon their open feeding-grounds and so crowded them out, as farms and fences are crowding out the buffalo in the far west, does not appear; but what is certain is that the wild potato itself does not now appear either. We have lost all count of the primitive stock, so that we can't go back to it to cross it with its own degenerate descendants, or to develop anew from its barbaric tubers the succulent Regent or the Ash-leaved Kidney.

When Raleigh brought the potato to Europe, it fared even worse in its new home at the hands of man than it had done in its old one. For the attention of civilized gardeners was mostly directed to producing new and better varieties seedlings that ran to tuber exceedingly at the expense of the general constitutional vigor. More than that; when once a good seedling was produced, everybody tried to get seed-really tubers for planting from that individual plant and no other, thus neglecting to keep up the older varieties. The consequence is that all the potato-plants on earth are now parts of two or three individual potatoes, and may very likely be ultimately derived from a single good gardener's variety of the seventeenth or eighteenth century.

The history of this last-named aggressive host in itself beautifully though painfully illustrates one final chapter in the biography of any decadent species. The potato-bug, as it is more simply than euphoniously called in its native country, plays to the dying potato_the part of the barbarian invader to the Roman Empire. (Did I not promise to discourse to you of the decline and fall, and do you not now see how strictly appropriate, by biological analogy, was that seemingly strained and extreme metaphor?) For many centuries the Colorado beetle, as yet unknown to fame, had fattened and thriven on the leaves of a Rocky Mountain solanum, which was not the potato, but a distant cousin of somewhat similar taste in the selfsame family. It commonly happens that each species of plant in the wild state is thus preyed upon by a particular insect; and entomologists know well that the best way to catch certain rare butterflies or moths is by watching for the caterpillars on their special food-plant, so as to breed them out in due time from the chrysalis. The solanum of the Rocky Mountains was thus the proper pabulum for the larva of the Colorado beetle, ere yet its dreaded name was known to history, or its misdeeds had become in two worlds the subject of repressive legislative enactments.

In time, however, as civilization took its way westward, the potato spread in its wake to the base of the Rockies. The white man came and brought his tuber with him. Then the enterprising beetle saw his chance in life. Being a tolerable botanist, he perceived at a glance that the new plant introduced into his preserves by the American immigrant was indeed a solanum (though I don't for a moment suppose he called it to himself by that or When once a plant has reached that any other name), and that it would probaadvanced stage of dotage, its fate is bly prove, as the advertisements say, sealed, surely and irrevocably. Actum excellent substitute" for that other of its est de potato. You may indeed prolong kind, his accustomed food-plant. He tried its life for a while through progressively it forthwith, and it succeeded admirably. feebler and ever feebler representatives; "The potato for the potato-beetle!" was

an

museum

thenceforth his cry. In a very few years | many future generations. If these experithe number of Colorado beetles on the ments prove successful, the plant we shall face of the earth had increased a thousand- obtain will be, not quite a potato, but a fold, and the intrusive host of loathsome, sturdy mulatto of sound and vigorous concrawling larvæ - they are the ugliest and stitution. It is hoped that the new potato slimiest creatures ever seen outside a (not, of course, in the Covent Garden - had set Malthus at defiance, sense) will prove superior to the attacks and spread over the length and breadth of of Peronospora infestans — the mildew of America. To them it must have seemed the famine—and will laugh to scorn the as though the American people had planted puny attempts of that now dreaded viswhole square miles of a peculiarly deli-itor, the Colorado beetle, whose advent in cious and succulent solanum for no other purpose than to provide a pasture for innumerable hordes of Colorado beetles.

Now the moral of all this, as the duchess would have said to Alice in Wonderland, is immediately apparent to the reflective intelligence. Why did the Colorado beetle, who had never killed off his own solanum in endless centuries, succeed in overrunning such vast areas of good potato country in a few short seasons? Clearly because the potato itself was already too enfeebled by old age and disease to withstand the attacks of its insidious enemy. A vigorous young stock would have repelled the invaders, as Rome repelled the Gaul in the days of the republic; a decadent race could no more resist it than the provincials of the last age of the empire could resist the onslaught of Alaric or Attila. The reason why the potato fell so fast before the mountain-bred foe was the same as the reason why the Roman fell before the northern barbarian from his snow-clad fastnesses. The stock was worn out; the race was exhausted; whatever enemy chooses to attack it now, be it Goth or Hun, beetle or mildew, gains an easy and all too inglorious victory over the unhappy tuber. Nothing remains but the ghost of the once mighty plant, the Romani nominis umbra of defunct potatohood.

[ocr errors]

Europe by Cunard steamer, on a Continental tour, has been duly expected any time these last ten years.

Finally, let me pour forth one word of comfort into the distressed ear of British housewifery. I fear my prognostication of evil to come may have sunk too deep into the tender heart of many an anxious wife and mother. She may have trembled too trustingly for dear baby's dinner. To calm these excessive fears for the future of cookery, I should like to explain that when I talk of the proximate extinction of the potato I use the words only in a Pickwickian sense, and by the usual measures of geological chronology. The probable date which I would fix upon for the fulfilment of my prophecy is approximately that of the Greek Kalends. The potato is undoubtedly in very feeble health; but its friends and its medical advisers hope that with care and attention its life may be spared for many years to come, if not even perhaps prolonged indefinitely. Threatened men live long. The potato may live longer than any of us reckon upon. It is true its constitution is seriously impaired, and its liability to disease grows every day more marked. But no effort is being spared by science to recruit its shattered health; and now that the true nature of its complaint — old age is fully understood, measures are being taken before it dies to And is the potato really doomed? And supply its place, if the worst should come, must the tuber die? Then thirty thou- by an appropriate successor of the same sand Kerry boys will know the reason why. family. This successor will doubtless Has a cruel and oppressive Saxon govern- share half its blood, and, if the attempts ment, intent merely on the woes of Kent at hybridization turn out as well as we and Leicestershire, done nothing to pre- have reason to expect, will be stronger vent this national disgrace, and to guar- and healthier than its decrepit ancestor. antee the foodstuff of the finest peasantry In any case, we are fairly safe in our own in Europe? Well, there is still hope, time. Our beefsteak will not be divorced though a very faint one. Attempts are from its faithful helpmeet. And after us being made by skilled botanists to cross the deluge. Succeeding ages will learn the potato with various allied South Amer- to do without potatoes altogether, or will ican solanums, so as to bring back some- patronize the yam trade with the flourish. thing of the primitive vigor to the ex-ing republics of central Africa. hausted stock, and to preserve its life to

From The Fortnightly Review. IN THE BALKANS WITH PRINCE

FERDINAND.

in deference to the ambitious designs of a foreign power, a fatal blow will have been dealt not only against their national independence, but also against those principles of right and justice on which the smaller states of Europe depend for their existence.

A YEAR has how passed since it was my good fortune to make a tour with Prince Ferdinand through eastern Bulgaria and to return with his Royal High- It is a pleasant surprise for the traveller ness via the Danube and Lom Palanka to from the West - from "Europe," as the Sophia. A description of the journey ap- Bulgarians say who has hitherto been peared in the Fortnightly Review of last obliged to spend twelve dreary hours on July, in which I ventured to express an the road from Pirot to Sophia, to find him. opinion as to the extent to which the self gliding luxuriously in the Orient exprince had already won the affections of press into the handsome station which his subjects, and to assert that his posi-now adorns the Bulgarian capital. The tion had more of the elements of perma- railway has brought Sophia into contact nence than was generally admitted at the with Western civilization. Everywhere time. I had witnessed many manifesta- progress is manifest. On leaving the stations of loyalty so spontaneous and enthu- tion I was first struck by the general apsiastic that no amount of official pressure pearance of bustle and enlivenment so could have succeeded in creating them. much in contrast with the Oriental sleepiEven at Plevna, Rahova, and Nicopoli, ness of the old Turkish town, and next the strongholds of the Russophil opposi- by the sight of a handsome straight bouletion, the prince had been warmly received. vard, planted with trees on either side, It was true, however, that not many which has been formed by clearing many months before Bulgaria had gone through scores of the wretched but picturesque a crisis of extreme gravity; she had es. old houses which a few months ago were caped, so to speak, with her life from a standing here undisturbed in their ancient Russian coup de main; and it was only squalor. This was not the only improveto be expected that at such a time the ment I noticed in Sophia. Another handpeople would give a hearty welcome to some street, also planted with trees, now the prince of their choice whose existence runs through the southern portion of the among them was a guarantee that Bulgaria town, the view being closed in at one end was still a free country. Such manifesta- by the cathedral and at the other by the tions might therefore have been inter- snowy summit of Mount Vitosch. A fine preted rather in the light of a proud chaussée, the future Rotten Row of Soassertion of national independence than phia-if one can imagine a smokeless as a tribute to the personal merits of the Rotten Row with a charming mountain prince, who at that time had scarcely had view-now leads in a south-westerly sufficient opportunity of showing what he direction to the broad grassy downs, over could do for Bulgaria. But in the twelve which the horseman can gallop for miles months which have passed Prince Ferdi- without meeting an obstacle. These imnand and his subjects have had abundant provements have not been carried out opportunity for forming a closer acquaint- without opposition. A mob, mainly com. ance with each other. The excitement posed of women, violently resisted the aroused by Russian interference has sub- demolition of an orthodox church. The sided; the country has enjoyed nearly authorities, believing with Pindar that two years of perfect tranquillity; and in "water is best," endeavored to cool the the calmer atmosphere of the political ardor of feminine fanaticism by bringing a world the Bulgarians have been enabled fire-hose into play, but the Amazons cap. to gain a clearer insight into the character tured the obnoxious instrument and inand capabilities of the sovereign whom jured some of the laborers with pokers, they have chosen. Has Prince Ferdinand tin cans, and other domestic utensils. justified the national choice? Has he Everywhere substantial modern dwellings strengthened his hold upon the affections are taking the place of the rickety huts of the people? Will he be able to retain and sheds which commemorate five hunhis position as the head of a free and inde- dred years of Turkish rule. It is hard to pendent nation? Such are the questions believe that the capital of Bulgaria has which must suggest themselves to every only just reached the first decade of its true friend of Bulgarian liberty. For it freedom. The laying out of streets and may be taken for granted that if the Bulga- planting of trees has been actively superrians submit to another change of régime intended by Prince Ferdinand, who takes

the greatest interest in the improvement great scheme of Eastern policy, and to of the city. Sophia has a future. place Austria in the position of a great Slav power.

66

dinners," he said, "and some of them can put a regiment through its drill; but when in time they are brought face to face with political problems they prove to be mere children."

Soon after my arrival I was honored with an interview by the prince, who, Yes," he said, "the man of genius somewhat contrary to my expectation, ap. was there, but he is dead;" and he went peared in excellent health and spirits. I on to speak with touching sympathy of had feared that a year of anxiety at home the tragic fate of the archduke Rudolph, and discouragement from abroad might whose refined scientific tastes he shared, have seriously affected his health, but I and whose great mental endowments and was agreeably surprised to find him look- enlightened appreciation of the Slav races ing better and stronger than when I last seemed to mark him out as the future saw him. But what struck me most was regenerator of the Hapsburg dynasty. the tone of increased confidence and de- Speaking of the great political ability cision that characterized his language; which distinguished the ill-fated heir of there was a firmness, a vigor, a resolu- the Hapsburgs, the prince said it was all tion, which I had not noticed before, and the more remarkable when one bears in which impressed me most favorably. In mind the very inadequate training which the course of a long and interesting con- is thought sufficient for youthful scions versation the prince drew my attention to of royalty in most European countries. the rapid but solid progress which Bul-" They can ride and shoot and eat good garia has made during the last year, to the tranquillity and order prevailing in the country, notwithstanding the unsettled condition of the neighboring Balkan states, and to the successful efforts he had made to put down brigandage. He also alluded Doubtless Prince Ferdinand felt, what to the great advantages already resulting he did not express, that the severe trials from the opening of the Psaribrod-Vaka- | of the last two years have been worth rel line, and to the improvements in progress at Sophia, of which I had already taken notice. Speaking of his own position his Royal Highness said that the attitude of the great powers, so far from proving injurious, had been of positive advantage to him in assisting him to win the sympathy of the Bulgarians, whose hatred of foreigners and everything foreign amounts to detestation. Had he come to the country as a representative of Russian or of Austrian influence, he would always have been regarded with suspicion, but he had now identified him self with the cause of Bulgarian independence, and with Bulgaria he would stand or fall. Deserted by those who, for personal or dynastic reasons, might have been expected to support him, and confronted with innumerable difficulties and dangers, he had taken refuge in boldness (l'audace), and boldness would be the characteristic of his future action. Nothing, he said, suited his position better than a cheerful pessimism; he had often said to his officers in jest that as they had driven away Prince Alexander, who had led them to victory, he supposed they would soon be ready to get rid of Prince Alexander's successor. The conversation turned upon Austria, and I said that the moment appeared to be approaching when the house of Hapsburg would need the guidance of a brilliant genius to unfold and develop a

more to him as a political training than all the previous experience of his life. His Royal Highness then invited me to be present at the opening of the works of the Yamboli-Bourgas railway at the latter town, and to accompany him afterwards on a tour along the southern slopes of the Balkans, and through the beautiful Valley of Roses to Kalofer, returning thence vid Philippopolis to Sophia. I need not say that the invitation so cordially offered was gratefully accepted; and the interesting scenes which I witnessed during the days that followed will never fade from my memory.

The ceremony of the inauguration of the railway works at Bourgas had been fixed for the orthodox May-day, the 13th May, according to our calendar. A special train left Sophia on the eleventh at six A.M., conveying the ministers, the chief public functionaries, and the other invited guests. It was a pleasant spring morning, and as we passed through the open country which surrounds Sophia, I was struck by the beautiful effect of the eastern light as it fell softly upon the snows and verdant ravines of Mount Vitosch. Presently the train came to a stop, and we saw in the distance a party of horsemen cantering towards us across the dewy grass. It was Prince Ferdinand, accompanied by a small escort; and the prince, riding through a brook which intervened, ap

« ElőzőTovább »