THE POTATO. 181 



caster, to promote incipient vegetation in some warm place, 

 as a house or green-house, by laying a woolen cloth or some 

 other covering over them. When the sprouts are about 

 two inches long, he plants them out towards the end of 

 March, and thus procures young potatoes in seven or eight 

 weeks. In some places, the plants are forced to some ex- 

 tent, by being protected in frames covered with oiled paper. 

 A secondary planting of tubers should be made before the 

 middle of April. When the stems are a few inches above 

 ground, the earth should be drawn to them ; an operation, 

 however, which, while it improves the crop, delays its ma- 

 turity for two or three weeks. Mr. Knight recommends re- 

 moving the flowers as they appear, and states that by this 

 means the produce is increased by a ton per acre. The fine 

 early varieties, however, scarcely produce any flowers. 



An important fact in the cultivation of the potato was 

 observed about the year 1806, by the late Mr. Thomas 

 Dickson, of Edinburgh, viz., that the most healthy and 

 productive plants were to be obtained by employing as 

 seed-stock unripe tubers, or even by planting only the wet 

 or least-ripened ends of long-shaped potatoes ; and he pro- 

 posed this as a preventive of the well-known disease called 

 the Curl. This view was confirmed by the late Mr. Knight. 

 An intelligent writer in the Gardeners Magazine sug- 

 gests a method by which sprouting of the eyes is accelerat- 

 ed. He takes up the seed potatoes a considerable time be- 

 fore they are ripe, and exposes them for some weeks to the 

 influence of a scorching sun. The resulting crop is at 

 least a fortnight earlier ; but it is not said how this prac- 

 tice affects the curl.* 



* It is not thought necessary here to enter on the subject of the very gene- 

 ral potato disease of 1845 and 1846. Notwithstanding numerous inquiries 

 and publications, nothing satisfactory, either as to cause or cure, has 

 been established, and, fortunately, the evil is gradually disappearing. 



