AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 337 



wholesome articles of food. When I was a boy we had the potato 

 very frequently on table, the same sort condemned in the articles 

 of apprenticeship, an irregular nodose figure, skin light red, flesh 

 reddish colored almost to the centre, and there yellowish white, 

 waxy, rather strong taste. It was a long time before we had a 

 good potato, mealy and well tasted. I rejoiced in the iirst we 

 received from England and Ireland. I used to give gladly two 

 dollars for a wicker basket of them containing about three pecks. 

 In 1808, I first tasted delicious mealy potatoes from Nova Scotia. 

 They were all roundish in form — skin dark blueish brown color — 

 about two inches in diameter, flesh very solid and when boiled 

 very white, mealy and delicious. After that we had some most 

 excellent potatoes from England and Ireland, and some of our 

 own. They had, according to Prof. Mapes' theory progressed ! 

 we all know this to be generally true, as well as its opposite, dete- 

 rioration. But we have had dark ages among men, intellectually 

 and physically, and also reinstauration as Bacon would say. 



Solon Robinson said that potatoes from our Lake Superior lands 

 were of very superior quality. 



Prof. Mapes remarked that the progression in the potato is not 

 so marked, for it is as yet rather a new plant. 



Mr. Robinson — We are assured by a potato cultivator that he 

 has always good crops of" good potatoes, never touched by disease, 

 and he ascribes it to his mode of culture. He uses a small gouge 

 to take out the eys for planting, and keeps the body for use. 



Mr. Field — Don't confide in that ! But experience has proved 

 that what is termed the seed end of the potato should be cut off 

 and planted. That the other end brings forth poor spindling 

 imperfect plants. 



Prof. Mapes — I have tried that, and so has our President, Mr. 

 Pell, it does not amount to much. 



Mr. Field — Ireland grows the best potatoes. Put a potato one 

 foot apart in the plowed furrows, so that every square foot has 

 its potato, and we can have five hundred bushels of good potatoes 

 on an acre. 



Mr. Waring remarked on the production of new plants from 

 soil dug from considerable depths. 



