146 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



part of the plant. To put it in the ground in a certain form 

 and have a different kind of potato come, from it would be 

 something as if you should cut out some branches of an Isa- 

 bella vine, cut them up into lengths of one or two eyes, keep 

 them in your cellar until spring, then plant them out and get 

 Hartford Prolifics or Concords from them. The potato seed 

 is from the balls and that is the only seed that the potato has. 

 If there is any gentleman present who has been accustomed 

 to hybridize potatoes, and to grow them from the ball, he will 

 testify to the fact that by fertilizing the blossoms of one kind 

 of potato with another, he can get a great many different kinds 

 of potatoes from those balls by planting the seeds. The first 

 year they will be very small ; the next year the product will 

 be a little larger, and the next a little larger still. That is the 

 way the Rev. Mr. Goodrich has obtained the Garnet Chili, the 

 Early Goodrich, the Pinkeye Rustycoat, and half a dozen 

 other kinds which he has given to us. Only a few of the 

 thousands he has cultivated have proved to be worth one far- 

 thing, but those he has given us have restored, as it were, cur 

 potato crop from the almost annihilating rot; and from that 

 source alone we shall have to recuperate that excellent escu- 

 lent, without which neither this nation nor any other can get 

 along. We must recuperate it occasionally. There must be 

 some Rev. Mr. Goodrich, or some other gentleman, whose love 

 of agriculture is almost a passion, to take the same trouble in 

 a few years more, and give us a new series — perhaps of the 

 Early Rose or some other potato more excellent still. 



Mb. Yeomans. My impressions and my convictions would 

 have been precisely the same as those of the gentleman who 

 has just taken his seat, if it were not that they had been 

 interfered with by the fact I have stated. Why was it that 

 the first year (without any chance to mix in the cellar, to 

 which the gentleman has referred) the planting of those two 

 varieties, side by side, produced a different kind. I will say, 

 to preclude the idea that there was any mistake, that those 

 potatoes were very marked in their characteristics. It was not 

 the case of the selection of two red potatoes so nearly alike that 

 it would be .almost impossible to make a distinction, biit one of" 



