74 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



Professor Woods. Well, I should stop as quick as my 

 conscience would let me. 



Ex-Governor Hoard. You spoke about planting potatoes 

 late for seed. Doesn't that raise the proposition whether it 

 would not be better for a person to plant especially for seed? 



Professor Woods. I intended to give that impression, and 

 I will say this, that if a man was going to grow his own seed, 

 I think, here in Massachusetts, it would be better to plant 

 a late potato ; the only trouble is, a fellow has got a small 

 patch, and he will neglect it. If he plants a few potatoes, 

 there is not one farmer in twenty but what something else 

 would crowd in and he would let it go ; and the one great 

 reason we grow better potatoes in Aroostook County than 

 elsewhere in Maine and Massachusetts is that it is the far- 

 mer's business to grow his potatoes. He does not keep 

 cows, and he is not obliged to feed his cows or milk them ; 

 and there isn't anything he has to do but to take care of 

 that field of potatoes, and that field will have from twenty 

 to fifty acres in it. He keeps one man and a pair of horses 

 working on twenty acres from spring until the fall, and his 

 one man and pair of horses will care for his twenty acres, 

 and they don't do anything else. That is one of the reasons 

 we grow potatoes better, — because we are growing them for 

 business. They are not thinking of the dair}^ cow or the 

 breed of sheep ; I wish they were, but they are not. They 

 are thinking about growing potatoes. When I used to live 

 in Connecticut, up and down this valley there were men that 

 ate, drank and slept tobacco. And so there are men that 

 eat, drink and sleep potatoes down in Aroostook County. 



Professor Brooks. I think Professor Woods and I do not 

 differ, really, though I thought so by what he read in his paper. 

 I do not think we can afford to plant seed of our own growing. 

 I have had a chance to observe that a <>-ood many times in 

 our own experience ; and I have found always, I think, a 

 superior yield in quantity and goodness in seed purchased 

 from Maine. Our own seed is just as good, or perhaps 

 better; but it gives a crop which ripens a little later, and 

 gives a smaller yield. Without intending to discourage 

 those who wish to raise their own seed, from seed purchased 



