318 Remarks on the Choice of Seed Potatoes, fyc. 



to it ; you take them off the tree long before they are ripe, and 

 experience has taught us that they will keep much longer, and 

 eat much fresher, than those suffered to grow ripe upon the 

 tree : the same is the case with the potatoes taken up before 

 ripe. Placing the potatoes upon the gravel, or any dry but 

 not grass walk, in the sun, has the effect of stopping the cir- 

 culation in the tuber, in which nature has provided resources 

 to carry it on to an extraordinary degree, unless so stopped. 



If you will examine the potato stem or plant, when the tubers 

 are beginning to be formed, you will find that the potatoes are 

 placed upon the runners pushed or issuing out from the plant 

 or stem above the set : the functions of the set are to push out 

 roots to gather food from the soil to supply the plant and 

 leaves with that food ; and from the leaves the blood or fruit- 

 sap flows down to form the runners and new potatoes ; and the 

 more you earth up the plant or stem, the more runners are 

 formed higher up on the stem, and the more potatoes are pro- 

 duced. 



Permit me to add, that all the best farmers in the warm and 

 rich soils and warm climates find their accountm changing their 

 seed-wheat ; for that they send to the poor soils and cold cli- 

 mates, often to the poor cold chalk-hills in Oxfordshire and 

 Gloucestershire ; and what is the sample of the wheat they 

 obtain from thence ? — notoriously the most shrivelled, from 

 being cut before ripe. If farmers on rich soils would reap their 

 wheat, preserved for seed, before ripe, they need not be at the 

 expense, trouble, and inconvenience of sending 100 miles for 

 their seed-wheat, which is often the case. 



The present season of the year being favourable to you and 

 your readers putting my observations in this and my former let- 

 ter to the test, viz. earthing up the potatoes, causing them to be 

 later ; earthing them up, after taking away a few of the earliest, 

 causing them to throw out new runners and produce more po- 

 tatoes; the top or eye-cuts producing potatoes a fortnight earlier 

 than the bottoms of the same tubers, &c. ; I trust that I shall 

 see the results of their observations in the ninth Number of 

 your interesting publication. 



Writing for plain, unlearned men like myself, I deem it 

 unnecessary to hunt in dictionaries, and other such learned 

 books, for scientific or philosophical terms to garnish my tale, 

 the want of which, I trust, will not render it less useful, or less 

 acceptable to you and your readers. I am Sir, &c. 



A Denbighshire Gardener. 

 March 29. 1827. [ 



