614 THE PHYSIOLOGY OF SOWING SEEDS. 
cuttings sometimes fails; but that after such 
treatment any cuttings at all can germinate. I 
know that partial failures in the germination of 
potatoe crops, have been assigned among a mul- 
tiplicity of absurd surmises, to atmospheric influ- 
ences; and I deny not that these may operate at 
times against it; for I have known portions of a 
field planted in the morning partially fail, when 
the afternoon’s planting has fully succeeded ; 
and vice versa, all in the same field—all taken 
from the same heap of potatoes—and all manured 
from the same dunghill; still, I conceive we 
deserve a punishment, from laying ourselves 
open to it; for if we do not kill our seed potatoes 
outright by ill treatment, we leave them so 
nearly void of the germinative principle, that 
the slightest adverse condition only finishes what 
we have begun. 
That it is chiefly the power of germination 
that is destroyed by the course pursued, as just 
mentioned, the following facts will render highly 
probable. Years ago, when my attention was 
first directed to the failures of germination 
among the potatoe crops, I was induced to open 
the drills, where the plants had failed, to see in 
what state the cuttings were, and was surprised 
