60 



at the earlier plantings ; for this reason the horse-hoe was also- 

 used before each of the other plantings. After another month 

 namely, on May 31 another planting was made of all the- 

 varieties, but this time and subsequently only one pole of each 

 lot was planted. A fortnight later twelve of the fourteen 

 varieties were planted ; and still another fortnight later 

 namely, on June 28 the last planting was done, and ten out of 

 the fourteen varieties were set. It will be shown subsequently 

 that the plantings were carried late enough for the purposes of 

 the experiment. The potatoes were horse-hoed, hand-hoed, and 

 moulded up in the usual manner, as soon as the crop was 

 sufficiently forward. 



The earlies were planted at 24 in. from row to row by 18 in. from 

 set to set ; whilst the mid-earlies and main croppers were given 

 a larger space in which to develop namely, 24 in. between the 

 rows and 21 in. between the sets. The potatoes were regarded 

 as ripened when the stems had entirely died down and no sap 

 remained. As it is practically impossible to fix this to a day 

 or two on some scores of sets, the date put down was that of 

 the next Saturday after the first day when no life could be 

 perceived in any of the stems on the plot. It will be noticed 

 that though the plantings occupied a period from first to last, 

 of 12 weeks 5 days, the greatest difference between the time of 

 ripening of the first planting and that of the last planting of 

 any one variety was only six weeks, and this occurred in the 

 first earlies alone. Of the mid-earlies only one plot (White 

 Elephant) made a difference of as much as five weeks, and the 

 longest interval on the main varieties was but four weeks, and 

 that on one variety (The Bruce) alone. 



It seems only reasonable to expect the best results from those 

 plantings that had the longest time to develop in the ground,, 

 and this is almost invariably the case ; for we find that of the 

 14 plantings made on March 31, 13 yielded more than those 

 planted a month later, whilst the fourteenth (Myatt's Ashleaf> 



