A STUDY OF FACTORS INFLUENCING THE YIELD OF POTATOES 1145 



the scope of the survey and the status of the industry during the years 

 1912 and 1913 is given in table 1. Of the four regions surveyed, the 

 potato crop is regarded as of most importance on Long Island and of least 

 importance in Franklin and Clinton Counties. 



TABLE 1. SUMMARY OF THE FOUR REGIONS SURVEYED 



THE CROP SURVEY AS A METHOD OF RESEARCH 



From its inception in this country, agricultural teaching has depended 

 largely on textbooks, collateral references, and the published results of 

 experiments. There is still a considerable lack of practical information 

 which can be supplied only by protracted experimentation or by the 

 study of large numbers of survey records in the regions concerned. Fre- 

 quently problems arise which local experiments fail to solve because of 

 the impossibility of handling the work on a sufficiently extensive scale. 

 Large numbers of records might very often be the means of discovering 

 the common causal factor prevailing thruout a region, thus furnishing the 

 solution of the problem or at least a working basis for its solution. A 

 typical illustration of this is furnished in the investigations on pecan 

 rosette by McMurran (1919). Pathologists had previously been unable 

 to account for the cause or to recommend measures for the control of 

 this disease, which was so prevalent thruout the pecan orchards of the 

 Southern States. McMurran, by taking records of many orchards in 

 the various pecan regions of the South, discovered that the disease was 

 almost entirely absent in the orchards of the rich river bottom- ands, 

 and from this observation he deduced that the cause of the disease lay in 

 certain soil deficiencies. 



The farm-crops survey aims first of all to search out the actual facts 

 concerned in the production of a given crop in a given area. This informa- 

 tion, obtained in sufficient quantity, may then be regarded as statistics 



