No. 4.] MARKET GARDENING. Ill 



where he can keep them, so that the sprouts will not start, 

 and also a soil where he can grow them with e^^es as large as 

 they are grown in the northern part of Maine. You want a 

 potato with a large, strong eye. You want also a strong lite 

 and a healthy potato. It is not the shape and the size so 

 much as it is the life, simply because it is only a continu- 

 ation of the old life. It is not the production of new life or 

 of a seed. It is similar to the scion you take from one tree 

 to another. If you have a scion that has a strong life, that 

 is healthy and vigorous, you get a better tree from it than 

 you will from a scion that has picked up a disease somewhere 

 and is weak in constitution. You would propagate that 

 weakness, and it is the same with the potato. A potato 

 with a constitutional weakness will not produce more than 

 two-thirds, if it does more than half, as much as a potato 

 which has a good, strong life, and has no disease. It con- 

 tinues along in the same life. It is not the creation of new 

 life. I think the farmers in general do not pay attention 

 to this point in growing potatoes. They do not recognize 

 that it is not seed they are planting. I have tried carefully 

 for many years, and have not been able to change in the 

 least the form of a potato by selection. 



Mr. Joshua Clakk (of Tewksbury). Those of us who 

 attended the Farmers' Congress in Boston, and heard the 

 very interesting paper on market gardening by a gentleman 

 from Kentucky, will remember that he dwelt on raising 

 potatoes. In Kentucky he said they could raise two crops 

 of potatoes. He also said that from the second crop, from 

 the potatoes not fully matured, they would get potatoes two 

 weeks earlier. It would seem to contradict what Mr. Her- 

 sey has said. 



Mr. Hersey. It is not a contradiction. If you take a 

 round potato and do not cut it, you get potatoes about ten 

 days earlier. You get potatoes from eight to ten days 

 earlier by planting uncut potatoes. Why? Simply because 

 by cutting the potato, unless you cover it with something, 

 you are weakening its life. 



I tried an experiment for ten years in succession, using 

 the same seed, keeping it separate and carrying it along, 

 and the tenth year there was quite a difference in the product 



