66 ESSEX SOCIETY. 



Experiment on the Cultivation of Potatoes. 



Salem, Nov. I9th, 1849. 



Dear Sir, — Having devoted a large portion of my life to 

 the pursuits of agriculture, allow me to make some remarks re- 

 specting the culture of potatoes. Never having found any of 

 the early kind of potatoes that yielded to my satisfaction, I 

 was induced to try several modes to find a remedy for the 

 evil. My first experiment was reported to the trustees of the 

 Massachusetts Society for the Promotion of Agriculture, as fol- 

 lows : — 



Salem, Dec. 1st, 1820. 

 Hon. Josiah Q,uincy : 



Dear Sir, — Observing the produce of a few potatoes, which 

 I transplanted last year, to be very good, I was induced this 

 season, to try the experiment upon a somewhat larger scale. 

 About the 1st of April, I took some late white potatoes, after 

 cutting them, placed them in a hot bed, as close as they would 

 lie, and covered them with earth. On the 24th of April, the 

 plants being in fine order, some of them twelve inches high, 

 I took them up, and separating all the shoots but one, from the 

 parent potatoe, I made drills about three feet apart with a hoe, 

 and filling the same with well digested manure, I transplanted, 

 as I should cabbage plants, the whole of the shoots, about nine 

 inches apart, in the drills. On the 3d of May, there was a very 

 sharp frost, which injured the tops of the plants very considera- 

 bly ; they in a few days recovered, and grew verj'" rapidly, 

 scarcely one of them failing. The rows were twice hoed. On 

 the 30th of June, I commenced using new potatoes, the size 

 large and very fine, equal to any taken up in October ; finished 

 digging them on the 10th of August : the land measured ninety 

 by fifty-two links of the chain, on which stood one pear and 

 one plum tree, and produced at the rate of two hundred and 

 ninety-five and three-quarter bushels per acre. The rows 

 might have been much nearer, consequently, the produce would 

 have been greater. I could not perceive any difference in the 

 yielding of the plants, between those which were separated, 



