EXPERIMENTS IN POTATO CULTURE. 119 



TThile an ordinary crop of potatoes can be grown b}' almost any 

 one, and with but little effort, to grow a large crop to the best advan- 

 tage requires greater skill than it does to grow almost any crop 

 that is produced on a New England farm. The reason of this is 

 because in propagating the potato we do not plant the true seed but 

 a tuber. As there is a vast diff'erence between a seed and a tuber, 

 if we are to work to the best advantage in growing the potato we 

 need to make ourselves familiar with this difference. 



A true seed is derived from the unit}' of two incomplete germs of 

 life, which are often derived from flowers of two different plants, but 

 when derived from the flowers of the same plant, the product of the 

 seed thus obtained differs from that of the plant from which it was 

 derived, evidently partaking of the qualities of some previous genera- 

 tion. For example, a grape vine ma}' be isolated so that the flowers 

 must fertilize themselves ; though the vine ma}' produce the choicest 

 fruit, the seeds may produce new vines that will produce very poor 

 fruit, thus showing that the seeds are a new creation that draw 

 qualities from remote previous generations. 



A tuber is derived from a complete germ of life, and partakes of 

 the qualities of the life from which it is derived ; it is not a new 

 creation by the unity of two lives, but simply the extension of one 

 old one. A true seed contains one germ of life, and is surrounded 

 with a limited amount of plant food to force a growth in the new 

 plant, and in the different seeds from the same plant there is but a 

 slight difference in this amount of stored-up plant food. A tuber 

 contains many germs of life, and there is a great variation in the 

 amount of stored-up plant food to supply the varied numbers of life 

 germs ; but unequal as is the amount naturally, man steps in and 

 increases it by cutting out the single life germs and planting them to 

 depend entirely on the plant food in the soil to force the young plant, 

 or by the side of a germ thus planted he may plant a large tuber 

 with all of the germs of life but one destroyed, thus providing for 

 this a very large amount of stored-up plant food. Thus, while one 

 plant is compelled from the start to depend on the soil for its food, 

 the other has enough to feed on for weeks without depending at all 

 on the soil for nourishment. 



A true seed is enclosed in a covering which keeps out the air and 

 water to a great extent until placed in the earth where warmth and 

 moisture combined start the germ of life enough to burst the cover- 

 ing. But a tuber has no such covering. Both the air and moisture 



