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It was not until the Blight had spread far over the Home Counties that the general public became interested in the matter at all; and at this period the mass of people in the country districts were almost the only ones who saw any cause for alarm. The town-dwellers seldom came in direct contact with the sources of their food-supply; in fact it is doubtful if the lower-class Londoner of the old days could have answered a direct question as to the date of harvesting. Food came to them daily in a form which suggested very little with regard to its original nature. Wheat they knew only in the form of bread or flour; meat was divorced almost entirely from the shapes of the animals from which it was derived; tea, coffee and sugar brought with them no visions of tea-gardens on the Indian hills or sugar plantations under the West Indian sun. The furthest traceable point of origin of these things, as far as most of the population was concerned, was to be found in the retail shops. Thus there was a certain sluggishness in apprehension among the main bulk of the people when they read in the newspapers that the crops had failed. To them, it simply meant that we should have to buy in another market; just as they had to go to a fresh grocer when their own dealer ran short of some commodity which they required.