180 TRACTS ON VARIOUS SUBJECTS, &c. 



The experiment I have now detailed, led to another : which 

 is, indeed, the old-established practice ontliis island; and which, 

 on mj'^ arrival here, I was disposed to condemn, as being so very 

 opposite to English husbandry. 



This practice is to leave in the ground, at the time of taking 

 lip potatoes, a suthciency of seed for the following crop, and this 

 is called " a self-sown crop." 



Comparing a crop of several acres of the Church fields, treated 

 in this manner, there is at present every appearance of its being 

 even superior to a part of the same field that was regularly 

 planted in rows, and with seed from the same crop as that left in 

 the ground. This " self-sown crop" is, indeed, much more for- 

 ward : which may be easily explained. It is evident that the 

 seed, by remaining in the soil, had suffered no check in vegeta- 

 tion : whereas the other seed, by being taken up and exposed to 

 the air in a building, for several weeks previously to being 

 planted, must have been drier, and therefore less susceptible of 

 the powers of vegetation, at the time they come into action in the 

 regular course of nature. 



Hence it is obvious that a succession of crops of potatoes may 

 be obtained here, after a field has once been brought into culti- 

 vation, without any other expense than taking them up, and then 

 harrowing the field. All that is necessary is to leave the requi- 

 site quantity of small seed potatoes in the ground at the time of 

 taking up ; and I would recommend that the gathering of the 

 crops should be postponed as long as possible, so that the pota- 

 toes, to be left in the soil, may receive some check in vegetation, 

 by which the new crops may more nearly meet the most favourable 

 seasons for vegetation ; that is, in the rainy months. 



By this simple mode of cultivation, there would be no less than 

 six expensive operations saved to the farmer ; the first is, the 



