612 [Assembly 



potatoes about one large table spoonful of this, as a top dressing, before 

 weeding and half hilling, and a like dose after the second hoeing. 

 He hoes the crop three times, after our old fashion ol forty years 

 ago. He makes large broad hills, he digs his potatoes late, when 

 the ground is quite cool, November. I observed an excellent crop 

 of mealy potatoes produced on a headland, on the north side of a 

 wall. We think that the salt which we use in the top dressing, 

 keeps down the ammonia which otherwise causes too great a growth 

 of the potato stalks. Our soil is a yellow loam. Harry Hubbard, 

 of our place, has cultivated a variety of potatoes, wh]te, pinkeyed, 

 and peach blow, the whites do not rot. 



Mr. Hyde. What crop do you get? 



Mr. Fay. Less than we used to have ; we used to have a bushel 

 fiom eight hills, but I think we lately get one from thirty hills, I do 

 not wish to speak, however, of the amount of crop, because I am not 

 certain. 



Mr. Hyde. The polato crop has fallen off greatly. It is reduced 

 to 80 or 100 bushels per acre. I used to have over 400. 



Isaac Q. Underbill, of New Jersey. I used to have from 400 to 

 500 bushels of potatoes to the acre, now we get sometimes 40. 



Mr. Meigs. Do you find any seed balls on your potato vines? I 

 have last year examined some acres and found no seed balls on them. 

 We used to be troubled in digging potatoes, with the numerous balls 

 crushing under our feet in the rows. 



I. Q. Underbill. I saw very few on my vines. 



Professor Mapes. The top dressing, mentioned by Mr. Fay, would 

 seem to indicate that potass was useful to potatoes, neither the ashes 

 nor salt would tend to decompose the sulphate of lime, and probably 

 the potass contained in the ashes is the only chemical agent contained 

 in the top dressing. The salt, doubtless, prevents the too rapid 

 evaporation of water, and the sulphate of lime prevents the soil from 

 recompacting itself from the action of rain, as well as enabling the 

 gases from the atmosphere to enter the soil freely from its remaining 

 free and open. 



Professor Mapes. French agriculturists have taken the pains to sift 

 soil, and found that it was equal in the proportion of 1 to 10 to the 



