A HILL OF POTATOES. 95 



think that this subject is not well chosen, that it really is a subject 

 of universal importance. 



A brother farmer has said to me this morning that the subject was 

 not of special interest here, for the time had gone b^' when you in 

 this section were making this a leading feature of your farming or a 

 leading product on your farms. 



The Board of Agriculture was aware of that, and yet the farmer 

 is not sitting here before us who does not raise potatoes, or try to, 

 and the self same farmer who said that the subject was not of special 

 importance here made the statement that his crop of potatoes this 

 year did not amount to much — an argument at once, you see, of the 

 necessity right here of as much knowledge as we may be able to gain 

 of this subject. 



Although the individual interests here in this particular direction 

 may not be large, 3'et when you consider the fact that it is of uni- 

 versal application, that every farmer in the count3' is growing, or 

 attempting to grow, and would grow, more or less potatoes, 3-ou see 

 that in the aggregate it is a matter of considerable importance, even 

 here in Penobscot County. 



In what I may saj' this morning I merely want to call the attention 

 of the audience to the widespread importance of the subject. I was 

 brought up to look upon the potato as one of the low-grade crops of 

 the farm. This was educated irrto me bj' my father. He was one 

 of those farmers who was alwavs careful of the condition of his soil, 

 that it be kept productive, that it be carried from its present condition 

 to something better right along year after year ; and I was educated 

 to believe that the potato was an exhaustive crop, that if it was 

 continued on a large scale on the farm for any length of time it 

 necessarily reduced the productive condition of that soil and in 

 the end was a detriment to the highest interests of agriculture, and 

 on that account was not a profitable crop. I have held an opinion 

 all along without really knowing the reason why or studying into it 

 to find whether it was actually sound or not, that this was a crop to 

 be set aside as much as possible. Recentl}' I had my attention 

 called to it from a different standpoint ; and I must sa}' that I have 

 got some light upon it which has led me to look very differenth' upon 

 the crop from what I did before giving it this more recent attention. 

 Senator Frye, at a dinner given to the sous of Maine in New York, 

 made a very happy speech. In it he alluded, as is usual for speakers 

 on such occasions, to the importance of the ice crop and the granite 



