AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 605 



made the best crop. Acting on this principle, our best cultiva- 

 tors on Long Island, for early digging, select their potatoes, 

 planting by themselves the largest, from which planting they are 

 enabled to dig their first marketable potatoes. The others are 

 planted in some other location, to be dug later. Of course this 

 applies only when potatoes are dug before they have reached 

 their full size. Many farmers on the island who do not plant 

 over a half a dozen acres, dig and sell their whole crop before the 

 vines begin to decay; and it is common even with those who 

 plant twenty and thirty acres to sell half and sometimes nearly 

 the whole crop before fully matured. The advantages are two- 

 fold ; first, they get more money for their crop, and incidentally, less 

 carting; and second, they are enabled to put in a more profitable 

 second crop early than can be raised later in the season. I might 

 add another important consideration, viz : that when dug some- 

 time before maturity they exhaust less from the soil. Wiih 

 ordinary manuring, which is heavy and expensive with us, potato 

 ground improves, and the crop is repeated with advantage for a 

 succession of years without limitation. All good farmers reject 

 the very small tubers. Undoubtedly they may sometimes pro- 

 duce good crops; but they oftener prove failures, and are not 

 reliable. Dr. Waterbury has well said tliat the wide difference 

 in the results of experiments and consequent opinions, is in a 

 great degree attributable to a dissimilarity ot some of the attend- 

 ing circumstances. 



I have had no experience in planting the eyes of the potatoes 

 with only the pealings attached. In the Ohio experiment the 

 smallest yield was obtained from the eyes planted with very little 

 of the tuber connected. Though the old tuber feeds tlie new 

 plant, and hence may increase the grow^th and the crop, it is not 

 indispensable to its growth and full development. Sweet potatoes 

 are placed in hot beds to sprout, and when the sets are suflS.- 

 ciently large, they are removed and planted in the drills where 

 they are to grow. This operation is repeated again and again, 

 even sometimes four sets of sprouts are taken from the same bed. 

 This is the exclusive mode of propagating the plants in New 

 Jersey, where immense quantities are raised. The tuber is never 



