No. 4.] THE CHANNEL ISLANDS. 107 



enriched with sea-weed. The leaves are stripped off as 

 they become hirge, being used either for feeding cattle or 

 packing butter, and the plants are left to spindle up with a 

 small crown at the top. The stalks, which occasionally take 

 on tree-like dimensions, are used as palisades for fences or 

 poles for beans, but most frequently they are shellacked over 

 or varnished and made into canes, selling readily to tourists 

 at prices ranging from hfty cents to a couple of dollars. 



From what has l^een said it will be readily conjectured 

 that the potato is the chief crop. The greatest care is taken 

 in the selection of seed, and they are handled as tenderly as 

 the choicest fruit, each tuber being picked up separately and 

 placed in an open crate, only one layer deep. In some 

 sheltered spot or in a shed these crates are piled up one 

 al)ove the other till ready for use. When preparing for 

 planting, these are placed in some warm corner and the 

 potatoes allowed to sprout, selection l)eing made of those 

 shoots which have formed a healthy top and spring from a 

 good eye. Al)out twenty-two hundred- weight of seed per 

 acre is used, being set about ten inches apart, and in rows 

 some twenty-two or three inches wide. Cultivated in the 

 open air, they are ready for market in April and May, but 

 with the glass-house system now in vogue they are matured 

 much earlier. Previous to the inroads of the potato disease, 

 which greatly affected the crops, it was no uncommon thing 

 to have a yield of twenty tons to the acre, and the average 

 was fourteen ; but it has now dropped to ten or eleven. So 

 great is the demand for these potatoes that few are retained 

 for home use, and large quantities are imported from France 

 into Jersey for consumption ; but, owing to the early crop 

 being exported at a very high price, and the French potatoes 

 purchased when the price is lowest, the balance of profit 

 remains very largely in favor of the island. 



Some idea of the fertility of the soil may be formed from 

 the following figures : Hay averages three and one-half tons 

 to the acre ; a good return of one-year-old clover is over four 

 tons, of two-year-old not more than three and one-quarter ; 

 wheat averages thirty-five bushels, though in some favored 

 fields the yield has reached sixty ; mangolds fifty tons, occa- 

 sionally reaching seventy ; parsnips twenty-five to thirty ; 



