39-2 



THE GUIDE TO NATURh 



times in less than one year from the 

 time the plants were taken from the 

 trees in their native forests. 



Many details and interesting" inci- 

 dents connected with this work must 

 of necessity here be omitted, space not 

 permitting any extensive treatment of 

 the subject. 



Some Rare Seeds. 



In the year of [892 while 1 was di- 

 rector of the first session of the na- 

 ture study school at The Connecticut 

 Agricultural College, Storrs, Connecti- 

 cut, one of the teachers, Professor- 

 Gulley, horticulturist, made the state- 

 ment before the class that he would 

 give twenty-five ($25.00) dollars for 

 every potato ball found in the state of 

 Connecticut. While 1 supposed he 

 made this statement more as a matter 

 of emphasis than to express actual 

 commercial value, 1 at once thought 

 to "turn the tables" on him. I took my 

 hat and started for the potato field 

 and tramped up and down between the 

 rows searching in vain for even one 

 ball. 



To say I was surprised expresses it 

 mildly, because it seemed but a day 

 since as a boy in the potato field I 

 picked up the balls by trie quart. And 

 I remember particularly how we used 

 to have a game of throwing them 

 at one another from the end of a 

 pointed stick. But I could neither 

 claim the twenty-five dollars nor prove 

 the professor guilty of exaggeration. 

 The statement that surprised me and 

 the members of the class seemed use- 

 ful as an illustration before other audi- 

 ences, so for the last seven years, in 

 various parts of the state of Connecti- 

 cut, and at Teachers' Institutes in 

 various other states from Maine to 

 California, I have repeated the state- 

 ment and have made requests for a 

 supply of the balls. In the whole 

 seven years only one response has 

 come from the state of Connecticut, 

 and that in the form of a little vesti- 

 gial ball sent to me by a friend in 

 Southport. The sender admitted that 

 it could hardly claim the twenty-five 

 dollars or discredit the fact that po- 

 tato balls are never produced in Con- 

 necticut, because as is readily seen it 



THE RARE SEEDS OF POTATOES. 



is simply a memento of a forgotten 

 past, since potatoes long ago discarded 

 this as a usual method of seeding. 



A few weeks ago. however, my re- 

 quest met with another response and 

 a liberal supply was sent to me by Mr. 

 J. J. Asper, Newport, Pennsylvania. I 

 washed out the seeds from the tomato- 

 like balls and spread them to dry on a 

 glass. I took a few and photographed 

 them slightly enlarged as shown in 

 the accompanying illustration. These 

 few were selected from the large quan- 

 tity that I had, and placed separately 

 on the glass. but imagine my 

 mortification and disappointment when 

 upon visiting the laboratory the next 

 morning I found that I had only the 

 few from which this photograph was 

 made, because all the others had been 

 eaten by mice. So the reader will see 

 that ni)- material for potato seed ex- 

 periment is limited. Will not some one 

 please come to my assistance and send 

 me a further supply? 



