VIU PREFACE 



any use, scientific research must be rigidly accurate in 

 its observation and merciless to fallacy in logic. Once 

 a principle is proven it is of no use unless applied, and 

 the man to apply it is the farmer. 



At the present time it behooves us to divest our- 

 selves of prejudice, whether of tradition or custom, 

 which might tend to warp our judgment and treat as 

 debatable assumptions which long-established associa- 

 tion have made shameful to doubt, but which, undis- 

 turbed, would make the discovery of truth impossible. 

 To-day theories are no longer revered because our 

 fathers believed in them. The search-light of all- 

 prying Science illuminates the whole field of agricul- 

 ture, and has led men to doubt and call in question 

 even truth itself, in order that they might expose those 

 things which are not true. It is by this means alone, 

 by this attitude of questioning all statements and 

 theories, both the truth and the untruth alike, that we 

 can form a just estimate of what is true. That which 

 cannot stand the fire may rightly be esteemed dross. 



In this book the endeavor has been to colledl man)' 

 scattered fadts from many sources, and present these — 

 along with experience derived by growing potatoes for 

 several 3'ears, commercially and experimentally, in two 

 continents — in the hope that these data will be of value 

 to the reader. 



Samuel Fraser. 



Cornell University, 

 Ithaca, N. Y., 1905 



JVoff.— With the exception of Figs. 26, 27, 2S. 29, 30, 31, 43, and 44, which 

 were kindly loaned by the makers of these implements, and those in which 

 credit is given in the text, all illustrations liave been prepared by the 

 Author. 



