No. 6 DEPARTMENl OF AGRICULTURE. 696 



if a cliange were made every second or third year, tliere would be tar 

 less loss irom iui'erior stands of plants. 1 refer now to ail growers 

 wlio plant in early spring, Tliere are conditions under which vi- 

 taiiiy in comparatively warm latitudes may be maintained for a 

 time by growing the seed in the cool weather of autumn, but the ex- 

 perience of many successful growers is corroborated by co-opera- 

 tive tests at the Vermont and Maryland Stations, in which the Ver- 

 mont seed proved to be the better. The Missouri Station found Ver- 

 mont and Wisconsin seed superior to that of Missouri, and in tests 

 of Khode Island and Maine seed, the latter proved the better. 



Selection of Seed. — Growers have been puzzled by the contradict- 

 ory evidence concerning the relative value of small potatoes for 

 planting. Experiment Stations and individuals have gotten results 

 from comparative tests of small and large seed that conliicted with 

 results from other tests, and some farmers have concluded that 

 there is no choice in size. Let us think over the matter. The tuber 

 shares the degree of vitality possessed by the vine. It is a branch — 

 only underground. Its size depends upon two things: the vitality 

 of the vine and the time the tuber was formed. If it belongs to the 

 second lot of setts made by the vine, and is small simply because it 

 did not have time to become large before the vine matured, it comes 

 of just as good stock as the larger tubers, of the hrst lot of setts, in 

 the hill. It has good blood and can reproduce the vine that pro- 

 duced it. Such seed, though small, may give a maximum yield. 

 But there is the small tuber that was part of a spindling vine, low 

 in vitality. It is small because there was not enough good blood 

 in that vine to make any tuber as large as it should be. It is low in 

 vitality, as the vine was — a good-f or-naught tritliug — because the vine 

 had no original vigor. There are two kinds of small potatoes. 

 Those from vigorous vines may give good yields, while those from 

 spindling vines are a disappointment unless highly fed by a rich 

 soil under favoring climatic conditions. It could not be otherwise 

 according to nature's law&, and it is not otherwise in our farm ex- 

 perience. 



The "Eunty" Potato — Too much emphasis can hardly be placed 

 upon the distinction between the tuber of small size that has been 

 produced by a vigorous vine and the tuber of same size produced by a 

 w^eak vine. In the former instance we have a potato — an under- 

 ground stem or branch — that partakes of the great vitality of the 

 plant as evidenced by the strong branches. It failed to attain large 

 size because it belonged to the late setts of the plant, or btv,ause 

 the plant was late and did not have time for full growth. The tuber 

 of the other class is small on account of the natural weakness of the 

 vine. When small potatoes, known by growers as "seconds," are 

 used year after year in planting, the percentage of runty individuals 



