Gregory, writing from Coole Park on the 12th of November, says, he
cannot get the people to take precautions against the disease. By
putting drains under his own pits, and holes in them for ventilation,
and throwing turf mould and lime upon them, he says they are still safe.
His opinion is, that half the potatoes in his neighbourhood are tainted.
The police-sergeant of the Kinvara district makes a return, the result
of an examination of fifty-two acres of potatoes in eighteen fields of
from one and a-half to seven acres. The least diseased field, one of
four acres, had twelve tubers in the hundred diseased. In a field of
seven acres, ninety-six in every hundred were diseased, and the average
losses in all the fields was seventy per cent. Charles K. O'Hara,
Chairman of the Sligo Board of Guardians, writes to the Mansion House
Committee: "In many instances the conacre tenants have refused to dig
the crops, and are already suffering from want of food." Mr. Crichton,
of Somerton, Ballymote, says, the disease in his locality is not so bad
as it is elsewhere, but still it is his opinion that many families about
him cannot count on having a potato left in January.
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