CHEMISTRY OF THE POTATO. 133 



and I should try to get some grain crops to plow into it, and then I 

 should add to my manure ashes if I could get them. If I could not 

 of course I should go and bu}^ some kind of German potash salts. I 

 buy muriate of potash. I am not sure whether any rules can be laid 

 down by anybodj' by which an}- people in any portion of the United 

 States can take up any particular crop and make money out of it. 

 The making of money depends more on the man than it does on the 

 particular thing that he is going to do. It is said that some men 

 will sit on a rock and get rich, while others will grow poor on a ma- 

 nure heap. Now, it depends so much on the man that 3'ou cannot 

 lay down a general rule. If there is a good market for potatoes 

 here at a fair price, the farmers can turn that into money, but pos- 

 sibly there ma}- be other crops which would be more profitable. I 

 question whether it would be better here or anywhere to raise all po- 

 tatoes. I believe it would be using the land better to have a rota- 

 tion of crops, and here probably you might plant wheat in connection 

 with your potatoes and get more money out of it than you could to 

 plant either alone. I could give you no instruction in regard to this 

 except that each man carefully try it for himself, and keep exact ac- 

 counts and see which crops on his farm pay the best. The time 

 has come when farmers should know just what they are doing ; the 

 time has come when they should open their books and keep ac- 

 counts so that at the end of the year they will know just or very 

 nearly how much each crop has cost them. I do not know whether 

 they have exhausted their land or not. They may have sold a crop 

 and got a great price for it and taken it out of their soil, but I do 

 not think this is so great a danger as a great many do, because I 

 think there is a way to put it back. 



CHEMISTRY OF THE POTATO. 

 By W. Balextine, Professor of Agriculture, State College. 



It is unnecessary to give a detailed description of a plant so well 

 known as the potato. It may be well, however, to call attention to 

 the peculiar habit it has of throwing out underground shoots which 

 differ in character from the true roots of the plant by gradually en- 

 larging at the ends and developing into the tubers to which the plant 

 owes its value. 



These shoots are looked upon as underground stems and have for 

 their office the storing up of the material which has been assimilated 



