THE POSSIBILITIES OF AGRICULTURE. 89 



of communal habits and customs of mutual support, 

 derived therefrom, are alive to the present time. As to 

 the fertility of the soil, it is made partly by the sea-weeds 

 gathered free on the sea-coast, but chiefly at Blaydon- 

 on-Tyne, out of all sorts of refuse inclusive of bones 

 shipped from Plevna and mummies of cats shipped from 

 Egypt 



It is well known that for the last thirty years the 

 Jersey peasants and farmers have been growing early 

 potatoes on a great scale, and that in this line they 

 have attained most satisfactory results. Their chief aim 

 being to have the potatoes out as early as possible, 

 when they fetch at the Jersey Weigh-Bridge as much 

 as 17 and 20 the ton, the digging out of potatoes 

 begins, in the best sheltered places, as early as the 

 first days of May, or even at the end of April. Quite 

 a system of potato-culture, beginning with the selection 

 of tubers, the arrangements for making them germinate, 

 the selection of properly sheltered and well situated 

 plots of ground, the choice of proper manure, and end- 

 ing with the box in which the potatoes germinate and 

 which has so many other useful applications, quite a 

 system of culture has been worked out in the island 

 for that purpose by the collective intelligence of the 

 peasants.* 



In the last weeks of May and in June, when the 

 export is at its height, quite a fleet of steamers runs 

 between this small island and various ports of Eng- 

 land and Scotland. Every day eight to ten steamers 



* One could not insist too much on the collective character of the 

 development of that branch of husbandry. In many places of the south 

 coast early potatoes can also be grown to say nothing of Cornwall and 

 South Devon, where potatoes are obtained by separate labourers in small 

 quantities as early as they are obtained in Jersey. But so long as this 

 culture remains the work of isolated growers, its results must necessarily 

 be inferior to what the Jersey peasants obtain through their collective 

 experience. For the technical details concerning potato-culture in Jersey, 

 see a paper by a Jersey grower, in the Journal of Horticulture t zand and 

 zo.th May, 1890. 



