178 TRACTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, &c. 



mate are as favourable as any in the world for cultivation. I 

 need not recapitulate various successful experiments, which 1 

 have already published in the St. Helena Registers, on potatoes, 

 barley, oats, and wheat ; and on Indian corn, beans, &c. Sec. ; 

 nor have I leisure to arrange many others that have been com- 

 pleted, or are now in process : yet I cannot deny myself the 

 gratification of relating some circumstances regarding a very 

 cheap method of cultivating potatoes, which originated in infor- 

 mation I received from some captains of whaling vessels (who 

 had landed on islands in the southern ocean), and in the present 

 crops at the Plantation-house farm. 



Those captains assured me, that they procure potatoes, in 

 abundance, at some of those islands where a few were planted by 

 that distinguished navigator Captain Cook. It may be supposed 

 that in planting them they had not all the advantages of a well 

 prepared and pulverised field : nevertheless they grew, and con- 

 tinue to grow, and now spread over a considerable space of land. 

 This fact of the re-production of potatoes, during a period of forty 

 years, and their spreading property appeared to deserve notice. I 

 accordingly established the following experiment, with a view of 

 ascertaining the second point ; but which, however, was not so 

 clearly and satisfactorily determined as the first ; and this has 

 given a result far exceeding what I expected. 



The deductions that may be formed from a successive re-pro- 

 duction during so many years, are of such a nature as will leave 

 no doubt of the possibility of simplifying the potatoe culture at 

 St. Helena (and in all similar climates where vegetation is not 

 checked by frost) ; and of lessening the charge of labour to a 

 mere trifle in comparison with what is required in the colder 

 climates. 



The experiment alluded to was this : on the 18th of June, 1812, 



