POTATOES A FARM CROP. 191 



or four hundred bushels of corn. That is the reason I do not 

 raise any grain. I cannot afford it. I raised none this year of 

 any kind ; but a little less than a third of an acre of mangolds, 

 sold for enough to buy a hundred bushels of corn ; and I had 

 enough French turnips from the five-eighths of an acre that I 

 spoke of to buy two hundred and fifty bushels of corn. Those 

 French turnips cost ten cents a bushel ; and, as I said before, 

 that is the most economical way of raising corn that I know of. 

 That is what we do in Bristol. We sell all our carrots, and 

 buy corn. 



Dr. Loring. I desire to say one word in reply to Professor 

 Agassiz. His question relates to the position which the potato 

 holds in agricultural economy. It has passed out of the 

 economy of large farming in New England. That is, wherever 

 farming is carried on with any degree of profit, the potato is not 

 considered a root that can enter into that business. Some- 

 thing — the effect of the climate. or soil, or the limited time the 

 root has to run, — has already stricken it out of those products 

 which belong to the great economy of the farm. The same 

 cultivation that will produce a thousand bushels of good sound 

 purple-top Swedish turnip, the great turnip of England, the 

 ruta-baga, Skirving's King of the Swedes, would not probably 

 produce two hundred bushels of potatoes. In past times, when 

 the potato did enter into the economy of the farm, and was 

 thought to be a crop that the farmer could raise, it was a crop 

 of five or six hundred bushels of the coarse long-red potato, not 

 remarkably nutritious for either men or animals ; so that the 

 potato crop really should be classed with the primitive and ruder 

 modes of farming. 



"With regard to the comparative value of the potato and other 

 roots, the potato does not come into the scale in that respect 

 either. There is not so much nourishment in a bushel of lono;- 

 red potatoes as there is in a bushel of the turnips that I have 

 just spoken of, for feeding to stock. There is no question about 

 that ; analysis shows it ; experience shows it. Whether it is 

 the starch in the potato, or the sugar in the mangold, or what 

 it is, it is impossible to tell ; but there is no doubt about this 

 fact. 



Now, I wish to say a few words on what I conceive to be the 

 general subject. The raising of root crops has been a study of 



