JSo4- On the Advantages of Potato Hujbatidry. Ipj 



advice, is given : ' When potatoes aire cultivi^ted in tlie field 

 to any extent, they xhzy occupy a part of what has been allotted 

 for oats or beans in the foregoing fcheme of rotation •, but they 

 ought never to be put in the place of a perfc6t fallow, as the 

 potato culture cannot clean the ground in any efleQual degree 

 from root- weeds; tliey mud always be confidefed as an ex- 

 hauding crop, and confequcntly the foil after them ought to bts 

 well manured. * 



Thcfe obfervations fliould have efcaped my notice, were it 

 not that the fame unfavourable idea refpe£ling the culture of a 

 root that has aflbrded more relief to the poor, and yields a larg- 

 er qumtity of Imman fuftenance from an acre, tlian is to bj got 

 from any other crop whatever, feems to he entertained not o^^.ly 

 by almort all your correfpondents, but even by the Conductor 

 himfelf, whofe ideas and fcntiments refpe£ling rural ceconomy, 

 in general, are fully as correcl and jufl as are to be found in any 

 publication on tlie fubjc£l, that I have perufed. A refltclioii 

 upon thefe things induces me to communicate fome circumftan- 

 ces that have coriie under my obfervation, in the courfe of a lon;^ 

 and tolerably extenfive praclice. For confidcrably more than 

 half a century, 1 have every year been engaged in the cultiva- 

 tion of potatoes, to an extent, on my own account and thac 

 of others, feldom lefs than ten, and frequently above twenty 

 acres annually, befuies feeing the culture of above a hundred 

 acres more in my immediate neighbourhood, after which, iix 

 common feafons, v/heat was fovvn ; and unlefs bad feed was 

 ufed, or bad weather occurred, the crop rarely failed of yield- 

 ing the weightietl and moft abundant return, tliat was produced 

 from fields managed in a different way. Drilled beans, for the fc; 

 thirty years back, have been greatly cultivated as a preparation, 

 for wheat ; yet, in fo far as has come under my obfervation, 

 and wiiere the ground has been in the liighcll ftate of prepara- 

 tion, take one year with another, the produce of wheat after 

 beans has not, in general, been within a fourth or fiftli kf* 

 than what has been got after potatoes. Nor has there, in ge- 

 neral, any confpicuous degree of inferiority appeared in the fub- 

 fcrquent crops on the farrjC field after potato wheat, to thofe af- 

 ter bean wheat, when equally diflant from being manured. 



In fpring 1801, whef! putting in my beans, wliich, for more 

 than thirty years pail, have in general been all diilled, I found a 

 part of a field, about fixty yards in length, acrofs one end where 

 the ground was a little ftifFiih, (o much infcfted with couch grafs, 

 that I determined to give it a complete fallow, as, from its ap- 

 pearance^ it could not be thorgughly cleaned in drilled beans. 

 ♦SoTiie weeks after, I thought of taking a crop of potatoes. It 



VOL. V. -NO. "18. N w^s 



