718 Retrospective Criticism. 



in the kingdom with the black kinds. Sir, &c. — John Pearson. Kinlet 

 Gardens, near Bewdley, Sept. 22. 1829. 



Mr. Knight on the Culture of the Potato, Sfc. — Sir, In the last Number 

 of jour Gardener's Magazine (p. 294.), 3'ou have expressed a wish to know 

 the length and breadth of the ground which vi\y crops of potatoes occupied ; 

 upon which I calculated, in the account sent by me to the Horticultural 

 Society of London, the produce per acre : and as I consider the subject to 

 be out of very great national importance, I send you the following state- 

 ment. The public will, however, I believe, give me credit for knowing 

 how to make such an experiment correctly, and for integrity in stating 

 truly the result of it: but I have the evidence of two competent judges, 

 who saw the potatoes taken up and weighed, and the ground minutely mea- 

 sured; and who are ready to attest on oath their conviction that the crops, 

 extraordinary as they are stated to have been, exceeded the published ac- 

 count considerably. The account published by you must have appeared, as 

 you very obviously wished it to appear, incredible to your readers; for you 

 have suppressed every fact and inference which led me to send the account 

 to the Horticultural Society, and upon the evidence of which I accounted 

 for the immensity of the produce; and you have represented that com- 

 munication, which I consider much the most useful that I ever addressed 

 to that Society, and one of the most useful ever published by it, to be 

 perfectly nugatory, and discreditable to me as the writer, and to the Coni- 

 mittee of that Society as the publishers of it. I received the first intelli- 

 gence that you had done so, from a gentleman residing some hundred miles 

 distant from me; and whom I had never seen. If this charge is unfounded 

 (I do not accuse you of intentional misrepresentation), you can refute it 

 by publishing my paper: and it is a very short one; and this I call upon 

 you to do. 



The large, or Lankman's, potato grew in a plantation which was about 

 seventy yards long, and about twenty yards wide. I fixed upon the central 

 row, because it was the central row only ; and without any previous 

 examination of it, and having caused twenty yards at one end to be 

 measiued off^ and a stake driven in the ground at the end of that distance, 

 I took the produce of the next succeeding twenty yards, and allowed 

 something more than the full extent of the ground occupied by the se- 

 lected portion of the crop. Not less than half a peck of potatoes appeared 

 to have been drawn out and injured, as I have stated, within the twenty 

 yards above mentioned ; and as that quantity was more than equivalent to 

 twenty bushels per acre, I thought it proper, as I wished on this, as on all 

 other occasions, to convey minutely correct information to the public, to 

 mention the circumstance. 



The rows of the small ash-leaved kidney potato were about 12 ft. long; 

 and those grew in good soil, but without manure. One of these rows, the 

 central one, as in the preceding case, and what appeared to me not to be 

 a favourable one, was selected. I'he terminal plants, having had more 

 than their due share of light, were taken away, and the remaining produce, 

 upon a perfectly fair calculation and correct admeasurement of the ground, 

 inilicated, as I have stated, a produce per acre of G65 bushels of 82 lbs. 

 each. My gardener requested to have the produce of another, and appa- 

 rently a more favourable, row ascertained; and that indicated a produce 

 per acre of 695 bushels and .3 pecks. 



As you have asserted that there was nothing new in my mode of manage- 

 ment, except that of collecting a shallow soil into high ridges, I beg to ask 

 you, whether any person except myself ever pointed out the great advan- 

 tages of pliuiting potatoes, of every variety, large enough and near enough 

 to each other to cause the whole s irface of the ground to be covered, 

 under the conflicting influence of gravitation and of light, without the 

 plants in any one row being overhung or shaded by those of contiguous 



