72 MASSACHUSETTS HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



young plant. It is also generally understood that lieat and fer- 

 ments produce this change. I think it may also be shown that 

 frost assists, if it does not, in some cases, cause the change. It is 

 not uncommon, in cold countries for the early snows to remain all 

 winter, thereby preserving the ground from deep freezing, and 

 from the effects of frequent thaws. Such a condition obtained 

 with me one winter, while living in Waterville, Me., and a potato 

 of the Peach Blow variety, that had been overlooked in the fall 

 harvest, wintered in the ground and began to grow in the spring, 

 breaking ground a week or more before it was thought proper to 

 put in seeds. This plant grew more stocky and thrifty, than any 

 potato I ever raised, of that variety, yielding many large tubers, 

 much earlier than usual. It suggested an experiment, tried by 

 me the next fall, with the Chenango. Preparing a trench, ten 

 inches wide, by eight in depth, I put in the potatoes, covering five 

 or six inches with earth, filling up the trench with corn stalks, and 

 also making quite a pile of them above the surface of the ground. 

 Late and light snows, frequent thaws and hard freezing, the mer- 

 cury going far below zero many times that winter, wrought mis- 

 chief with my experiment. As soon as the danger of hard frost 

 had passed, I opened one end of the trench, to see how the potatoes 

 had wintered. The}' were all soft and rotten. It being too cold 

 to plant, the ground was left to dry and warm up. A few days 

 after, I observed near this place, a hen pecking at something white 

 as marble. I deprived her of her treasure, and taking some from 

 tlie point of my knife, found it sweet like grape sugar, dissolving 

 readily in the saliva, and seeming to leave behind no insoluble 

 residuum. It was one of my fall planted Chenangoes, and its con- 

 tents, starch, gum, cellulose, and water, had turned in the depth 

 of winter, apparently, to glucose. But how ? My mind went to 

 work on the problem. It could not have been caused by heat, and, 

 without that, ferment seemed out of the question. What other 

 agent had been at work there? Frost, undoubtedly, had been 

 there many times during the winter, but frost had no reputation 

 for such work. It then occurred to me that potatoes cooked after 

 freezing are sweet — sweeter than old, sprouted potatoes. After a 

 second freezing, though said to be spoiled, they are sweeter and 

 more glutinous. B3' a long application of heat, with acid or fer- 

 ment, there is no difficulty in turning the entire potato to glucose, 

 except perhaps, a portion of the water and the sulphur, phosphorus. 



