The Report for 1848-9 is dated, not on the 1st of May, as before, but on the 14th July. At the end of their last Report, the commissioners adverted to the great efforts which were made to restore the potato to its former position of the staple crop of Ireland, as being a circumstance at once hopeful and alarming. The policy of a people’s relying for subsistence on a crop so uncertain in its produce, and which so soon decays, is no doubt a question of momentous importance. But this was lost sight of in the promise of an abundant harvest; and as the disease had done little mischief last year, it was hoped the country would be equally free from its ravages in the present.[Sidenote: Recurrence of the potato disease.] At the beginning of August however, the appearance of blight was reported from many parts of the country, and although not so general nor so destructive as in 1846, the disease proved much worse than in 1847, and there can be no doubt that a considerable proportion of the crop was destroyed by it. In October sound potatoes were sold at 8_d._ per stone, a price at which the ordinary rate of wages would not allow a labourer to purchase them for the support of his family. Another season of distress was therefore evidently impending. The out-relief lists had been reduced from 830,000 in July, to 200,000 on the 1st of October, when the numbers again began to increase, and on the last day of December they amounted to nearly 400,000. The numbers in the workhouses increased in the same period from 114,000 to 185,000, with a weekly rate of mortality of 6½ per 1,000. Statements of the numbers relieved, and the cost of the relief afforded, were periodically submitted to parliament throughout the whole of this trying period. [Sidenote: Great distress and sickness.]