THE POTATO 483 



ing vegetables and crops of all kinds. This gives 

 winter employment and income. 



The amount of wheat and oats that grows on 

 this granite soil is wonderful. Much of it was 

 higher than my head and very thick on the ground, 

 and there was not one place where the straw was 

 weak enough to make it lodge. It had the strong- 

 est, stiffest straw I have ever seen. They told me 

 the wheat would give an average of sixty-nine 

 bushels to the acre. It did surely look as though 

 no more could grow on an acre, and I have seen 

 upward of seventy-five bushels in the irrigated 

 West. 



Referring again to the fertilizing, the Agricul- 

 tural Society of the island gives prizes for the 

 best conducted and appointed farm. The first 

 requisite in the scale of points, in a total of sixty, 

 is farm buildings, manure and liquid manure tank, 

 five points; if neat and compact, five additional 

 points. There are eighteen other factors for con- 

 sideration in awarding the prize. 



Shiploads of guano and commercial fetilizer are 

 imported and used; great quantities of turf, roots, 

 and cover crops are incorporated in the soil, and 

 every bit of animal manure is conserved. Ma- 

 nure is used at the rate of twenty to twenty-five 

 tons when they have it. That does not mean 

 sticks, fire fanged, coarse manure and straw, but 

 well-rotted barnyard manure which has the con- 

 sistency of well-ripened sugar-beet pulp. 



Their humid, cloudy, sunless climate makes a 

 splendid environment for disease such as blight. 



As a plow maker I have contended that it was 

 nearly impossible to make a moldboard plow that 

 would do good work over twelve inches deep, but 

 on the Jersey Island I saw moldboard plows that 



