1905.] DISCUSSION. 141 



the potato. The ordinary method is to go to the potato pile 

 to pick out the best tubers there. That is partially right, but 

 it isn't the whole truth. The best potatoes you pick may have 

 come from a vine that gave a very small yield, but, if you have 

 one potato vine in that yard that has given a large yield of 

 medium sized potatoes, free from disease, you want to get that 

 and try to build it up from year to year. 



Now, there is something in bringing in seed from dififerent 

 regions to renew the vitality of plants, but not so much as 

 ordinarily supposed. I do not think that the man that had been 

 bringing in seed from outside that was not selected would have 

 the results that a man would have who selected in this wav. 



Secretary Brown. I would like to hear Professor L. A. 

 Clinton, Director of Storrs Experiment Station. 



Mr. Clinton. Mr. Chairman, I was talking with a gentle- 

 man in the back part of the room and I don't know what you 

 want me to talk about. 



The President. Potatoes. 



Mr. Clinton. This year I sprayed our potatoes seven 

 times, and they nearly all rotted with us. Now, I didn't lose 

 my faith in spraying at all, but I have come to this conclusion : 

 that if we are going to spray we have got to do it more thor- 

 oughly than I did it this year, not more times, but it has got to 

 be hand work. I sprayed seven times with one of the auto- 

 matic spraying carts. That is an easy way of getting it done. 

 You can go over an acre in a morning before breakfast, if you 

 get up early enough, but it doesn't keep the potato from rotting. 

 The only way I have found effective to keep potatoes from 

 rotting is to have one man get on the cart and hold the pump 

 handle, and stay right by them and get them thoroughly cov- 

 ered with the mixture, the under side of the leaves, and the 

 stem as well as the under side. That means strenuous work, 

 but I believe it is better for the farmer to go over the potatoes 

 two or three times and spray them that way rather than seven 

 or eight times with an automatic spraying cart which lets them 



