The Assistant Commissaries-General and others employed in this service,
in due time, made their reports, which in the main agreed with the
statements in the public journals, and with the opinion prevalent
everywhere among the people; thus differing with those officers of the
Board of Works who held that there were more sound potatoes in Ireland
than was generally admitted. So early as the 11th of August, Mr. White,
writing from Galway to Assistant Commissary-General Wood, makes a most
unfavourable report of the state of the crop in Clare; the Blight, he
says, was general and most rapid in its effects, a large quantity of the
potatoes being already diseased, and a portion perfectly rotten. "I am,
therefore, clearly of opinion," he continues, "that the scarcity of the
potato last year will be nothing compared with this, and that, too,
several months earlier."[160] Commissary-General Hewetson sent specimens
of diseased potatoes to the Secretary of the Treasury in the middle of
August, with this information: "The crop seems to have been struck
almost everywhere by one sweeping blast, in one and the same night. I
mentioned a hope that the tubers might yet rally, many of the stalks
having thrown out fresh vegetation; I fear it is but a futile
hope.
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