The Viceroy, replying to the Premier's letter on the 17th of October, says he is deeply impressed with the extent and alarming nature of the failure of the potato crop, and has no doubt on his mind that it is general. The Premier had, sometime before, suggested Special Commissioners to collect information, but the Lord Lieutenant does not think they would be able to collect more accurate information than that _already_ furnished by the county inspectors. He suggests that when the potato digging is more advanced it would be well to move the Lieutenants of counties to call meetings of the resident landholders, with a view of ascertaining the amount of the evil, and their opinion of the measures most proper to be adopted. He sees no objection to such a course, though he dutifully adds that the Premier may. There could be no objection whatever to such a course. It was, so far as it went, the right course, because it would have called upon the proprietors of the soil to discharge the duties of their position, and to take counsel as to the best mode of doing it. In his after correspondence with Lord Heytesbury the Premier _never alluded to this suggestion in any way!_ Of course it fell to the ground. On the 19th of October, Mr. Buller, Secretary to the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland, wrote to Sir Robert Peel that he was after making the tour of several of the counties of the Province of Connaught, and the result was, that he found the potato crop affected in localities where people thought the blight had not reached. Mr. Buller's was a private letter to the Premier in anticipation of a more formal report from the Society, because, as he says, he "did not wish a moment to elapse" before informing him of the extent of the fearful malady, in order that no time should be lost, in adopting the necessary measures of precaution and relief for Ireland. He concludes by announcing, that a panic had seized all parties to a greater extent than he ever remembers since the cholera; which panic, he thinks, will go on increasing as the extent of the failure becomes better known.