54 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



felt mortified at this result of his labor, while at this moment 

 he would rather exult to secure half this amount. Many- 

 varieties of the potato, that generally known as the "long red," 

 for instance, were never found to ripen in the ground, the vines 

 being in full vigor until heavy frosts came upon them, while 

 the tubers were unfit for the table until late spring, and even 

 then but partially so. The same variety now presents its dead 

 and dried stalks early in September, very rarely waiting for the 

 lightest frost, while the farmer enters upon the work of harvest- 

 ing with sad misgivings, lest disease should leave him too small 

 a portion of his crop to remunerate him for his labor. It is 

 essential to profitable cultivation that the different varieties of 

 plants should be cultivated in distinct fields, while almost every 

 part of them is removed from the soil, thus of course tending 

 to a rapid exhaustion of the materials which nature takes so 

 much pains to accumulate as food for her crops. The conse- 

 quence is a necessary resort to artificial food, oftentimes of 

 questionable composition, and so expensive as to make the profit 

 of an increased crop very problematical. The condition of the 

 cultivated plant being unnatural and subversive of its natural 

 instincts, such changes must necessarily take place in its vital 

 actions (its reserved quantum of life nearly exhausted by stimu- 

 lation) as to make it extremely liable to become more or less 

 disorganized whenever the proper exciting cause shall be made 

 to act upon it, and those agents which, in its natural state, were 

 intended as stimulants to vigorous health, may and often do 

 become the direct agents in producing diseased action in the 

 already enfeebled plant. Thus' sudden atmospheric changes 

 which, in the natural condition of the plant, would be decidedly 

 beneficial to it, are often followed by the disorganization which 

 first attracts attention, and is so generally attributed to myste- 

 rious miasmatic agents carried by the atmosphere, and still 

 firmly believed to exist, although the most careful chemical 

 research has failed to detect any indications of their presence. 

 The nutritive functions of the plant having by ages of cultiva- 

 tion become perverted and diseased, it cannot be that those 

 belonging more directly to reproduction should not suffer from 

 the failing power of the organism which is entirely subservient 

 to the propagation of the species. Consequently we have vastly 

 overgrown or dwarfed fruits or vegetables, neither of which 



