524 THE GARDENER. [Nov. 



correct judgment till that period at any rate. This variety is a great 

 cropper, and suitable for field cultivation only. This Potato will 

 quite supersede the American Rose in our English climate and soil. 



" There are two more Potatoes I could have hoped to figure in this 

 list had not adverse fate ordained otherwise — one, Fenn's Rushbrook 

 seedling, a cross between the Early Frame and the white blossom 

 Ashtop. Two of my Potato friends who stood by when I dug them 

 up this spring — a peck of handsome tubers almost to each root — 

 strongly advised me not to make away with the sort, but they proved 

 of no advance on their parents as regards flavour, so I have destroyed 

 every tuber, and I trust the ingenious person who helped himself to 

 a tuber [suus cuique mos) from the plate on which I exhibited it at 

 Rury St Edmunds in 1867 will not jjerpetuate the breed. Fenn's 

 Onwards, alas ! this year has gone backwards. I cannot make it out. 

 For the last five years it has been with me a good Potato in every 

 respect ; a great advance on its parents, the Jackson's seedling Kid- 

 ney and the old FJuke. I must give this chield another year's trial, 

 however, as it does seem hard, after seven years' selection and care, to 

 have to part with ' all my pretty ones ; ' not only so, but the thing 

 repeated several times over ! "Well, I trust to my recent crosses to 

 turn out something better, even though I maintain some of the same 

 blood, either on the male or female line, because I feel convinced I am 

 right in thus laying a foundation for something good and permanent 

 in the future. 



'T remember, in a letter he wrote to me years ago, poor Donald Beaton 

 expressing that it was ' easier to raise Pine- Apples than Potatoes ; ' and 

 he once wrote the same observation publicly in the ' Cottage Gardener.' 

 ' Only a Potato ! ' is a common expression ; but if people, instead of 

 considering the esculent as a mere matter of course from its very com- 

 monness, could at the same time be brought to consider its national 

 importance, and to know but a tithe of the enterprise required to raise 

 a new and superior variety, they would hold the escuU, and perchance 

 the deluris, in its improvement rather higher in the scale of estima- 

 tion. 



" I cannot conclude without a word respecting Patterson's Victoria. 

 Although no favourite of mine, on account of its tendency to subtub- 

 erate, it is yet a good field Potato, and well suited for the market 

 table or the servants' hall. Like my Onwards, it will suit the north 

 better than our southern counties." 



I feel under a deep obligation to Mr Fenn for these valuable notes, 

 and hope they will prove acceptable to many of the readers of the 

 'Gardener.' R. D. 



