32 THE POTATO CROP. 



the sap would become weakened and vitiated, the whole 

 circulation of the plant would be deranged and irregular, 

 and if relief was not afforded speedily by natural causes, 

 disease would ensue and the plant die. 



Although by long cultivation we have considerably 

 changed the powers of growth of the potato, we have not 

 changed its natural structure, which clearly renders it 

 more suitable for certain conditions of cultivation than 

 for others; and the further we depart from those condi- 

 tions the more likely are we to debilitate the plant, and 

 to prepare it for the reception of disease. There is but 

 little doubt that each of our cultivated plants differs in its 

 soil and climate requirements from the others, and that 

 the nearer we can secure those most congenial to its 

 growth and development, the more satisfactory will be 

 our 'returns in the shape of produce. Although these 

 cannot always, in ordinary farming, be strictly followed, 

 they ought never to be lost sight of or neglected. In 

 the case of the potato they are more marked than in 

 many of the others; and their importance cannot be too 

 strongly impressed upon our minds, since, by long neglect 

 of principles in our cultivation, the general condition of 

 the potato has been gradually debilitated, and a tendency to 

 disease induced, which has been very prominently exhibited 

 to our cost and discomfort during the last fifteen years. 



Potatoes are always looked upon as a fallowing crop ; 

 their proper place in the rotation, therefore, is clearly 

 between two straw crops, and that is the place they in- 

 variably occupy in all well-farmed districts. Where they 

 are grown solely for market purposes as on the banks 

 of the Humber, and in the immediate proximity of large 

 centres of consumption, as London and Liverpool the 

 cultivation assumes a special character, and a departure 

 from a regular rotation is justified by the larger money 

 returns obtained, and increased sources of manure such 



