THE GENESEE FARMER. 



79 



by Lake Erie, will find it good economy to make tile 

 near the places where they are to be used. Tile are 

 now made at I'almyra, tiencca Falls, and we doubt 

 not at several other places in Western Xew York ; 

 and, so far as we are iuroniied, they are giving entire 

 satisfaction. 



The lake towns of Cliautauque county, with whose 

 topography we are quite familiar (having practiced 

 medicine at Westfield and Forestville ten years), con- 

 tain thousands of acres of wet lands that now yield 

 no crops, or very poor ones, that possess natural ca- 

 pabilities sufficient to render them cheap at .$200 per 

 acre, if properly drained; and nothing would give us 

 more pleasure than to aid the owners of these lands 

 in any way in our power to obtain cheap tile, that 

 they may perfectly reclaim these fertile and extensive 

 basins. They are sufficiently elevated above the lake 

 and its small tributaries in the towns named, to be 

 thoroughly drained. 



As Kipley, Westfield, Portland, Pomfort, Sheriden 

 and Hanover contain a goodly number of excellent 

 reading farmers, they have already done considerable 

 in the way of constructing both open ditches and 

 covered drains ; nevertheless, like our friend Dinsmore, 

 they need a better system, based on the most en- 

 lightened and economical engineering. In all our trav- 

 els over the Western, Southern, Middle, Eastern and 

 Northern States, we have never seen a district where 

 the happy union of rural sciences with rural arts 

 promised so obvious and so important advantages as 

 may be realized in Chautauque county. Earths that 

 yield a good deal of alum, as we know that some in 

 Ripley do, and abound in salts of soda, magnesia, 

 potash and lime, possess latent agricultural resources 

 of great value. Chautauque county, whether along 

 lake Erie or on and south of the dividing Ridge, is 

 comparatively deficient in lime. A thorough agri- 

 cultural survey of that county, by a competent per- 

 son, would be equally instructive to the general reader 

 and useful to its landed interest. Much of the water 

 leached from its soil and collected in under-drains 

 would be exceedingly valuable for irrigation, after it 

 had been treated with a little burnt brae to convert 

 the sulphate of iron ^copperas) and the sulphate of 

 alumina and potash (alum) into gypsum, and still fur- 

 ther to transform the phosphates of iron and alumina 

 into bone earth, or the phosphate of lime. Why the 

 lake towns in Chautauque county are so well adapted 

 to corn-culture, and how it happened that they sup- 

 pHed maize to the needy citizens of Oneida, Madison, 

 and we Ijelieve Chenango, in 1816, whose corn crops 

 were entirely cut ofii are thonghts called to mind by 

 the brief note of Mr. Dixsmore on under-tlraining 

 land on the south shore of Lake Erie. Both the soil 

 and climate there have peculiar and interesting fea- 

 tures. 



Peruvian Guano. — The government of Peru lately 

 appointed a committee to investigate and report the 

 amount of guano still remaining on the Chincha 

 Islands, who estimate the stock at 25,000,000 tons. 

 If this be so, it would take 500 cargoes annuallj^, of 

 600 tons each, three quarters of a century to clear 

 these islands ! 



Hypooricy is the homage that vice pays to virtue. 



EXPERIMENTS IN POTATO-CULTURE. 



Mr. Editor : — Being a subscriber to your paper, 

 and a reader of the same, I have taken some interest 

 in perusing the remarks made upon the subject of 

 potato-raising, the "rot," as it is called, its causes, Ac- 

 While reading for two years I have been experiment- 

 ing, and thus practically testing many of the sugges- 

 tions of your numerous readers and correspondents. 

 In reference to the arguments upon the cause or 

 causes of the potato rot, whether by Americans or 

 Europeans, they prove by practice to be just as con- 

 clusive as the old woman's test for indigo : she could 

 tell whether the indigo was good or not by putting it 

 in water — it would sink or swim, and she did not 

 know which. It is nevertheless true that th(!se argu- 

 ments are of great value. But to practice, we turn 

 and find that the soil is productive of no better or no 

 more positive proof ; for what one of your corres- 

 pondents succeeds in, others entirely fail in. 



Now, sir, permit me to make a few inquiries to all 

 practical farmers (and every man who tills four acres 

 of land may be called one) : "Why are your Pink Eyes 

 rotten and gone to manure, and the Flesh Colors sound, 

 in the same hill; and the next hill vice versa — Pink 

 Eyes sound and the Flesh Colors rotten? The next 

 hill is all gone of both kinds — and the next has both 

 kinds perfectly sound — with soil, seed and atmosphere 

 alike to each hill. Further continue your examina- 

 tion, and presently you come to a hill all of one kind 

 of seed (called Western Reds with us), and you find 

 one stalk with sound roots and sound potatoes, while 

 the rest of the roots of the stalks have the ajjpear- 

 ance of mildew from the surface of the ground down, 

 and in nearly all cases the worst appearance is nearest 

 the surface. 



You say, perhaps, you never saw the like. Well, 

 I have, and can prove it, and that, too, on good clay 

 soil, clay and loam soil, and gravel and loam soil. A 

 portion of the land was manured with a compost of 

 forest leaves; manure from cattle and horses, house 

 ashes and lime, were added to the heap of compost, 

 all well mixed and prepared; and a good supply of 

 ashes was spread upon the land two years l>efore 

 breaking up; a part of the land had not been plowed 

 in thirty years before; and I have obtained a like re- 

 sult from evei7 part of the field that I planted pota- 

 toes on. It is a field of two acres, from which I 

 gathered two hundred and forty bushels of ears of 

 corn, beside interspersing potatoes to the amount 

 of about four bushels of small seed — the largest spot 

 of potatoes by themselves being about three rods 

 square. 



Now, if my land lacked alkali, you would say thai 

 that was the cause of it. A part of it I know doej 

 not, having been well suppUed. Some may say the 

 manure was the cause. My reply is, the most of the 

 field had no manure applied to it. Well, you say land 

 that will produce such a crop of corn as that without 

 manure, will be too strong, any way, for potatoes. 

 Veiy well, I know some of my neighbors say pick 

 you poorest soil for potatoes (and they need not pick 

 a great deal, at least on some of their hundred and 

 fifty acre forms, to find acres upon whii'h nothing can 

 be grown but pennyroyal), so I plowed up about a 

 quarter of an acre through which a plow probably 



