126 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



munity, and whatever light can be thrown upon the question 

 is very important to all ; but I must confess that with my 

 experience with the potato-crop, I have been unable to arrive 

 at the conclusions which several appear to have reached dur- 

 ing the discussion. I have raised good crops of potatoes ; 

 and under the same circumstances — almost precisely the same, 

 as far as I could discover — I have raised a poor crop, treating 

 them in the same way. Take my crop of potatoes year 

 before last, for instance. They were planted upon new land, 

 and I expected a large crop of fine quality ; I had a poor crop 

 of potatoes, and the quality not good. 



Last year, on precisely the same kind of ground adjoining 

 (there were two swells, of about an acre each, and I know of 

 nothing by which I can state any difference in the character- 

 istics of the soil), with the same treatment, as far as manure 

 was concerned, applying it at the same time, and planting at 

 the same time, I had a most excellent crop of potatoes, and 

 the quality very superior. They were of as good quality as 

 potatoes used to be when I was a boy, which was very differ- 

 ent from what it has been of late years. This year, upon 

 another farm of mine, a mile distant from the one to which I 

 have referred, — it was pasture-land, and I don't suppose it 

 had been ploughed for thirty years, — somewhat of a hill, with 

 all the characteristics for a fine crop of potatoes, — I used pre- 

 cisely the same kind of manure which I used two years before, 

 which was not the very best way, I admit, but the potatoes were 

 manured in the hill with barn-yard manure. I expected a very 

 fine crop, but instead of that I got only an average one. The 

 quality, as far as eating is concerned, is very fair, — perhaps I 

 ought to say good ; l)ut not as good as that of last year, though 

 the conditions Avere better than those last year. But they 

 are scabby ; they are about as scabby a lot of potatoes as I 

 have ever had. There was never any house there ; there is 

 not a house, except my own, Avithin half a mile. I am by 

 myself, and the field is up some thirty or forty feet higher 

 than my house, and away from it. The land has been used 

 for pasture ; it was, in f\ict, covered with oak timber some 

 thirty-five years ago, — heavy ship-timber ; and since that, I 

 suppose, it has been ploughed once. From this land I have 

 this year got scabby potatoes, for about the first time in my 



