The News And Observer

Black With the Blight
All along the western seaboard, of Ireland from Falcarragh to Cork, potato fields are black with blighted stalks. I pulled up a dozen stalks to find only a few sound tubers, and these not much larger than walnuts. The majority of them are totally unfit for food. Every shovelful of bog earth revealed putrescent potatoes which were rapidly destroying the sound ones about them. Along the seaboard counties, Donegal, Mayo and Galway, the potato crop is a total loss, and as the people there depended entirely upon the potato crop, this means that they are already hard up for food. Bitter experience has taught them no better. They plant nothing but potatoes, partly because their holdings are so small that the potato crop when it prospers is the most profitable for them. Further inland where the soil is more fertile the potato crop is fairly fruitful. Taking Ireland as a whole, it is probable that only a one-third potato crop will be secured. This is not much below Scotland, where the blight has also been severe. Wheat and oats in Ireland are as good as the English and Scotch harvest.