50 THE POTATO CROP. 



before the disease visited our crops. The conditions under 

 which potatoes are commonly stored are frequently quite 

 sufficient to induce putrefactive fermentation, even in sound 

 roots ; and when we come to consider that the potato pos- 

 sesses several germs, and consequently several centres of 

 action, and that its tissues, being predisposed to disease, 

 present less resistance to a change in their structure than 

 would be met with in sound tissues, we ought to secure to 

 them every condition that either science or practice has 

 shown to conduce to the health and well-being of their 

 mass. If these were better understood and better carried 

 out than they are now, the losses sustained after the crop 

 is harvested and stored, would be very considerably 

 diminished. 



A peculiar mode of planting potatoes is still to be 

 seen practised in some places, especially in Ireland, and 

 also on the Continent, which has received the name of the 

 "lazy-bed" system. It consists in forming beds of soil, a 

 few feet in width, with intervening spaces or trenches. 

 These beds being well dug up, and the manure spread over 

 their surface, the potato sets are laid on the top of the 

 dung, and the soil obtained from the trenches thrown over 

 them, so as to cover up about 4 to 6 inches deep. This 

 mode of planting can only be admitted in districts or 

 countries where spade husbandry is carried out, and the 

 ordinary mechanical operations of tillage are unknown; 

 or in marshy or boggy soils, where the plough could not 

 act ; or in soils of a peaty character, brought under cultiva- 

 tion for the first time. 



In some districts, especially in the neighbourhood of; or 

 where facilities of transport exist to good markets of con- 

 sumption, the cultivation of potatoes forms the prominent 

 crop of the farming, the grain crops even being merely of 

 subsidiary importance. " On the early friable loams in the 

 neighbourhood of Ormskirk and along the banks of the 



