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Since the potato blight in 1845, no such rapid and extensive destruction of food supplies had been known. The standing crops in the affected areas withered; and a total failure of the home-grown cereals seemed to be inevitable. Nor was it only in this section of the food-supply that the attacks of the Blight became evident. Fruit-trees seemed arrested in their productivity; vegetables failed to ripen and began to rot. Everywhere the vegetable kingdom seemed to be falling into a decline. The great market-gardens and nurseries showed the trace of the same mysterious agent. Roses withered on their stems; and even the hot-house plants suffered equally with their open-air fellows. The only crop which appeared to escape the general disaster was hay.

And now it became clear that the Blight, as it was still called, was going to produce effects in the most widely-separated fields of activity. With a total failure of the crops, the financial side of the question came to the front. Throughout the length and breadth of the land, small farmers were beginning to realise that it was to be a year of utter disaster, ending probably in bankruptcy and ruin. The larger land-owners looked forward to the collapse of tenants and the failure of rents. Mortgage-holders began to consider the nature of their security, and when it was agricultural land they were placed in doubt as to their best course; for no one could foresee whether the Blight was a temporary epidemic or a permanent factor which would reappear with the next crops. And all these varying influences had their effects upon the great financial operations of the City; for even in that industrial age the land had maintained its value as a basic security which apparently could not suffer deterioration beyond a definite point.