330 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



hacked. We have never seen any instrument for digging that 

 will compare with an Irishman's shovel. Making a fulcrum of 

 his knee, the Irishman runs his shovel under a hill and lifts 

 potatoes and dirt together, carefully picking out and placing the 

 tubers in the rear, and scattering the soil about evenly, so that 

 when the potatoes are harvested the field looks as though it was 

 prepared for a crop of wheat. Such a mode of digging is 

 almost as good for the land as a thorough spading. 



Potatoes that are by constitution and culture healthy can be 

 stored in large bins, provided the cellar is not too damp nor too 

 warm. We are blessed with a dry cellar, situated on a gravel 

 knoll, and have never known a potato put into the cellar in 

 good condition to rot after it was stored away. The windows 

 should, however, be left open as late in autumn as the frost 

 will permit, and the temperature kept as near to the freezing 

 point as possible without exposing the vegetables to freezing. 

 Every cellar should also be furnished with a ventilator running 

 to the roof of the house, so that should any of the potatoes rot 

 the malaria may not poison the household. A simple hole in 

 the chimney makes the best ventilation possible, as the hot air 

 makes a strong draft, and the current will be found from the 

 first floor into the cellar and thence up the chimney, provided 

 there is a no more direct access to this great and best ventilator 

 of the house. 



In case the potatoes are wet by a sudden shower before being 

 housed, or from any cause they are wet when put into the bin, 

 it will always be safer to put a little air-slacked lime with them 

 as they are stored away. A little dry dirt upon them does no 

 damage, provided always it is sufficiently dry. A washed potato 

 never keeps as well as one that is put directly from the ground 

 into the cellar. Washing seems to remove a part of the integu- 

 ment which nature has provided to guard against the entrance 

 of moisture and air to the flesh of the potato. We often hear 

 thin-skinned potatoes praised, but they are apt to be of a deli- 

 cate constitution, and consequently more liable to disease ; so 

 that as Virgil says of the farm, " Praise a large farm, but culti- 

 vate a small one," so we say, praise a thin-skinned potato, but 

 plant those of a thick cuticle. As the potato is often kept six 

 or eight months before finding a market, it needs a thick cover- 

 ing to protect its virtues from evaporating. 



