144 Diseased Potatoes for Seed — Paste. [Sept., 



stored annually by leaves and bark, which fall off, decay, and 

 give back the phosphates, alkalies and lime. This is a beautifil 

 provision, inasmuch as the least abundant and most valuable mat- 

 ters are by law determined to the outside. Still no plant can 

 reach perfection within the area which the roots of a vigorous 

 tree occupies. Shade and the action of the roots of such a tree 

 in monopolizing the magazine of food, aie the reasons why corn, 

 the cereals, or tuberous plants are starved under such circumstan- 

 ces. Weeds, then, which are suffered to die upon the ground, 

 and there undergo eremacausis, do not impoverish the soils, but 

 bring up nutriment to the surface; they counteract the influence 

 of water, which, percolating through the soil, carries down the 

 nutriment from the reach of the roots, and bears it away to other 

 areas, where it is lost so far as the immediate uses to man are 

 concerned. Trees restore partially to the surface the nutriment 

 they bring up, but operate injuriously to growing crops; not by 

 any poisonous influence, but by excluding light and monopolizing 

 the store-house of food in the soil. The cultivated plants exhaust 

 under every system of husbandry which can be devised, whether 

 it be a rotation, or a perennial cropping by the same species; ex- 

 haustion goes on, whether you use clover or any other crop for 

 manure. When nothing is added, but something removed yearly, 

 exhaustion must occur in process of time. Hence a rule may be 

 laid down, that where a pound of matter is removed from a field, 

 organic or inorganic, a pound should be restored in some other 

 form. We include organic matter, for we believe it to be essen- 

 tial to fertility, and until the matter is regarded in this light, the 

 husbandry of any country will be conducted with a final loss to 

 its interests; inasmuch as the activity and usefulness of inorganic 

 matter depends upon the presence of organic matter in the soil. 



DISEASED POTATOES USED FOR SEED. 

 Healthy potatoes are produced from those which are diseased, 

 and it has been found that the crop is equal to that which has 

 grown from })crfect]y healthy tubers. 



PREPARED GUM FOR PASTING. 

 Take two parts of gum Arabic, one part of powdered traga- 

 canth, one part of coarse brow-n sugar, thoroughly dissolved and 

 applied of the thickness of cream. This is suitable for a great 

 variety cf purposes in a cabinet of plants or minerals, for sticking 

 small broken specimens, or for labels, etc. 



