76 MR DARLING ON PLANTING THE POTATO IN AUTUMN. 



The practice of cremation was, although common among the Britons 

 of the South, rarely or never adopted by the Caledonians. The skele- 

 ton, in the present instance, had never undergone incineration; but it is 

 probable, from the co-existence of the urn in the sarcophagus, that 

 partial cremation had taken place, that the body had been disembowel- 

 led, and the ashes of the viscera deposited in the urn. 



Such tumuli as I have described, but on a much larger scale, are 

 found in several places in Roxburghshire and Berwickshire, and probably 

 cover the remains of the illustrious or noble men who inhabited Britain 

 previous to the Roman invasion. That the tumulus was small in the 

 present instance may probably be accounted for by the youth of the in- 

 dividual to whom such honour had been paid.* 



On planting the Potato in Autumn. By George Darling, Esq. 

 Hetton-House. 



Having been requested by the Club to give some notice of my expe- 

 riments on the autumnal sowing of potatoes, I beg to offer the follow" 

 ing short statement on the subject. About 1836, my attention was first 

 called to the failures which every where began to prevail more or less 

 in the crops of this most invaluable esculent. Patches would be seen with 

 three or four drills entirely blank, whilst those on either side were good, 

 their leaves and stems strong and vigorous, and tubers plentiful. Various 

 opinions were hazarded as to the cause of this partial failure, one attribut- 

 ing it to their being planted too dry, another too wet, a third to electrical 

 influence; and many other imaginary reasons were freely thrown at ran- 

 dom. Knowing that seed grown on the same piece of land, but preserved 

 by different individuals and in different pits, vegetated unequally, some 

 being perfectly healthy, whilst others were more or less tainted with 

 disease, it naturally struck me that it must depend much on the har- 

 vesting and subsequent treatment of the seed. Again, I had seen that a 

 very material influence was exerted on the same seed by different qua- 

 lities in the manure with which they were planted ; and I observed also 

 that in gardens all the plants which vegetated where the old beds were, 

 came up strong, healthy, and full of vigour. This led me to the con- 

 clusion that the natural bed of the seed must be the best to keep it in 

 during winter, and that the manure suited it best when in a forward 



♦ The skeleton and the urn are now deposited in the Museum of the Tweedside 

 Physical Society iu Kelso. 



