FARMS. 145 



promotes the growth of the tubers, but prevents the rot. 

 Another puts ashes and lime in the hill, with excellent results, 

 using no other manure. Another ploughs in barnyard manure 

 and puts none in the hill. Another showed a peat-meadow 

 planted with potatoes. The land being too soft for the feet of 

 animals he dug holes, put in each a handful of stable-manure, 

 and with little labor had an immense crop, at the rate of five 

 hundred bushels to the acre, and this without rot.* Another 

 in strong, rich land, planted black Chenangoes, with strawy 

 manure in the hills, and the potatoes rotted badly. Another 

 planted with a handful of horn shavings in each hill, and raised 

 a good, sound crop. Another sows ashes and plaster broadcast 

 over the tops when they nearly cover the ground, and believes 

 that this treatment prevents the rot. Others plough in guano 

 for the same purpose. It is generally thought that guano, lime, 

 phosphates, horn shavings and other similar manures have a 

 less injurious effect than strong stable or barnyard manure, — 

 though even those must be well mixed with the earth and not 

 suffered to come in direct contact with the seed. 



No kind of potato is safe from disease. We hear it stated 

 every year that this or that sort of potato has not rotted. That 

 may be true for a single year, or for a few years, but in process 

 of time, every kind degenerates in quality and yields a smaller 

 crop. This season, the black Chenangoes and Davis seedlings, 

 formerly the soundest varieties, have proved no exception to 

 the general rule. We have seen no reason to modify our 

 opinion expressed in a report several years ago, that the potato, 

 from long cultivation and the widest possible departure from its 

 natural habits, had commenced a process of deterioration which 

 could not be prevented in any kinds now under culture. 



* Siuce tlie above was written, the Patent Office Report on Agriculture 

 has come to hand. From a liasty perusal, we judge it to be the most valuable 

 volume that has issued from that office. On page 197, in an essay on fertiliz- 

 ers, by Simon Brown, is the following passage : " Muck is suitable for any 

 lands, and may be used to advantage even on its own native beds. Drain it so 

 that no water shall stand permanently within fifteen inches of the top ; plough 

 and add alkalies in the form of ashes, lime or jalaster, and it will produce 

 abundantly of almost any crop of the farm. I have seen garden vegetables 

 growing luxuriantly on it ; and since the rot has affected the potato, that 

 indispensable esculent has been raised on original muck beds with better suc- 

 cess than on any other land." 

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