DAIRY AND SEED IMPROVEMENT MEETINGS. 247 



attaining the same object. It is time that we faced about and 

 began to march in the other direction. 



We have been amazed and shocked at the spectacle of the 

 most civiHzed nations of Europe sending forth the very best 

 of their men to be destroyed, and leaving behind only the phy- 

 sically imperfect and otherwise deficient to propagate the race. 

 We may not have stopped to think of it, but for years we have 

 been following in many parts of America, in a somewhat dif- 

 ferent manner, what is essentially the same plan with regard 

 to the potato crop. 



How frequent it is, in times of high prices like these, that 

 men in some localities will sell their entire crop and pick up 

 their seed wherever they can get it in the spring. Planting 

 small potatoes from high producing hills may do no harm, but 

 the man who systematically picks out the small and unsalable 

 tubers from his crop for next year's planting, is, at the same 

 time, unknowingly, selecting for propagation all of the tubers 

 from all of the hills on his field which, from disease or lack of 

 vigor, produced no merchantable potatoes last season. W^ithin 

 three years I, personally, saw a case where a man was hauling 

 all his crop to market and taking back with him for planting 

 the culls which had been racked out at the potato house, be- 

 cause they were diseased or were too small to go as table stock, 

 and he made no secret of his intentions in this respect. 



The results from such practices are less striking than tliose 

 which seem sure to follow from what is now going on in 

 Europe, but the evidence is accumulating and they are no less 

 sure 



Nowhere else in this country are the combined soil and cli- 

 matic conditions so favorable for the best development of the 

 potato plant as in Maine, particularly the northern part of the 

 state. For that reason we are able to take greater chances 

 with the seed used without apparent injury to the crop. How- 

 ever, during the last few years certain facts have become more 

 and more obvious in this connection and I am by no means 

 alone in the conclusions that they have forced upon me. Either 

 ])otato diseases are on the increase or else in the past we have 

 overlooked some of them in a most inexcusable manner. I am 

 perfectly willing to grant that there may be something, and 



