THE POTATO. 143 



not only to be less productive of seed, but actually 

 to lodge and rot. The quality of the roots is no 

 doubt a little deteriorated by excess of moisture, but 

 when they are sufficiently matured, rain has little or 

 no injurious influence over them. 



This plant seems alone to have been wanted to 

 make the agriculture of the British Isles complete. 

 Upon the western side, and among the mountains, 

 a grain crop is always precarious, and seldom or 

 never good. Scanty and bad as it is, its culture is 

 also expensive, as, after it has been reaped, it can- 

 not be left in the field to dry, but must be taken wet 

 into barns constructed of wicker -work, for the pur- 

 pose of obtaining a current of air, and there sus- 

 pended upon ropes. . Such a process is not merely 

 tedious and costly, but absolutely incompatible with 

 the culture of any considerable quantity of grain. 



A new soil produces better potatoes than worked 

 land in the highest condition ; and ground which is 

 light and spongy, provided that it has the advantage 

 of plenty of moisture, which does not stagnate, is 

 better than the strongest lands. The reasons are 

 obvious the tubers will form with the greater ease 

 according as the resistance is less which the ground 

 offers to their expansion, while so large a quantity 

 of vegetable matter elaborated in so brief a space 

 demands no little supply of humidity. Now the 

 little patches among mountains are composed of 

 the very best soil for this purpose, being generally 

 a mixture of sand and vegetable matter. Such a 

 soil is readily penetrated throughout by every shower, 

 and ye( the water does not stagnate ; as a moun- 

 tainous country near the sea is, in high latitudes, 

 always one in which there are frequent showers, the 

 watering of these mountain patches is precisely that 

 which is most beneficial, and therefore it would be 

 difficult to imagine a soil and climate better fitted 



