Potatoes at the West. 



POTATOES AT THE WEST. 



By M. L. DuNLAP, Champaign, 111. 



The new full-fledged hobby at the present time is new seedling potatoes; 

 and, of these, early varieties are in most demand. We have been grad- 

 ually approaching the crisis for the past dozen years : in fact, the disease 

 had its origin in the Rohan, in the infant days of other agricultural and 

 horticultural humbugs; and it now gives promise of being the richest placer 

 in the whole list. Brobdignag strawberries, clusters of grapes more mag- 

 nificent than those from the Valley of Eshcol, and other like wonders, have 

 become stale beside the new potatoes. 



The Rohan sold at fifty cents a tuber ; but now we go three dollars a 

 pound, or a hundred and eighty dollars a bushel, and scarce at that ; " de- 

 mand beyond the supply." This is decidedly ahead of a hundred guineas 

 for a tulip, of which only half a dozen could be produced in a season, or 

 five dollars for a plant of the celestial Moras multicaulis. The Early Rose 

 (no rose can possibly be so good under any other name) has gone down to 

 the low price of three pounds for two dollars, and is "evidently so disgusted 

 therewith, that it has gone back on its originators full two weeks on its 

 advertised time of maturity. We cannot, therefore, cap the "climax" 

 short of three dollars a pound. 



Leaving humbug and badinage aside, w^e may profitably spend a short 

 time in looking over the potato horizon. Naturally, the potato delights in 

 a cool, moist climate, and in a soil filled with humus ; artificially, we 

 must grow it under very different conditions of both climate and soil. 



To succeed best, we must study those natural conditions under which it 

 attains the best results. Varieties are important only in this connection of 

 adaptation to these conditions. In our dry atmosphere and dryer soil, 

 subject to long-continued droughts, in which the soil becomes an impalpa- 

 ble powder, we do not succeed well with the potato ; that is, the crop is 

 not a reliable one, though at times giving us the best results of a New- 

 England crop, but then again almost a failure. We suffer little by the 

 rot, but mainly from the long heated terms that arrest the summer growth. 



South of forty degrees of latitude, the potato is generally of poor quality, 



