AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 839 



"According to the published letters of John Ronald, Esq., of Glasgow, 

 Scotland, a gentleman who has given to the subject the most thorough in- 

 vestigation, sugar mixed with chimney soot forms the very best manure 

 for coating seed wheat and other cereals, as well as garden seeds, before 

 planting, that has ever yet been tried. Chemists have discovered that 

 a seed of wheat, immediately after life has been given to the embryo 

 plant, is by some inscrutable law of nature, changed chiefly into sugar, 

 by which the infant plant is kept alive and nourished, until it is able 

 to send out fibres or suckers in search of other nourishment. The 

 sugar enriches, and being, when dissolved, of a glutinous nature, adheres 

 to the seed ; and soot is said to be a certain preventive to the worm. The soot 

 and sugar should be mixed in water to the thickness of good cream, say to 

 six bushels of seed grain put three pounds of sugar, and snot to make it 

 like thick black ink; after mixing it well with the seed grain, let it stand 

 quiet in a tub from 2U to 40 hours. By this treatment of large sized seed, 

 which should always be selected, an increased crop of full 30 per cent can 

 be safely calculated upon by the farmer." 



NEW VARIETIES OF POTATOES. 



Judge Meigs. — The Paris Journal of Horticulture says the Rainville 

 potato is superior to any other new variety. Its flowers are lilac ; tubers 

 long, with few eyes ; skin light yellowish ; flesh light and fine grained, full 

 of starch, cooks quick, is of a pleasant taste, ripens in August, and 

 produces well. 



Dr. Holton exhibited a sample of a new French potato, called the 

 Decaisne, the seed of which he sent from Paris a couple of years ago to P. 

 M. Forward, of South wick, Mass., who thinks them remarkably fine. In 

 form they are like the English Whites — roundish, with deep eyes. 



N. R. French exhibited two samples, one of English Flukes and one 

 of Prince Albert, and asked the club to see if there was any diff"erenee. 

 He stated that the Flukes were selling at high prices as a new variety. 

 To him, and others who had examined them, they appeared identical. 



Solon Robinson. — Here is a letter from Champlain, March 25, which 

 recommends something new in potato growing. The writer says : 



" Last Spring, my brother, a neophyte in farm-life, planted a few rows 

 of potatoes in the garden, and planted them so deeply that his assistant — 

 a Nestor in farm duties — declared they would 'never come up at all.' 

 But more important matters claimed attention, and, despite old Joe's re- 

 monstrance, the poor potatoes were suffered to remain in their deep prison- 

 bed. Well, in the fall, our potatoes generally proved ' small and few in 

 a hill,' and the digger declared the hills which my brother had manipulated 

 to be entirely ilcstitute, until, in his investigations, he chanced to pene- 

 trate the compact soil below the loose earth. Here, to his surprise, he 

 stumbled on a perfect potaio-mine, a deposit of tubers, so imbedded in the 

 soil that their dislodgment was no small labor — the soil was so packed 

 you'd have thought it never saw a spade — and they were the largest, 



