Floricultural and Botanical Notices. 417 



other drills on each side were quite healthy ; a little further on I 

 have seen six or eight drills with a few slender and sickly stems 

 scattered along the line ; while again, on each side, all was luxuri- 

 ance. Now, as this is to be seen in many fields, does it not clearly 

 point to the sets as the cause of the deficiency, rather than to the 

 soil, the manure, the mode of treatment, or the climate ? 



But what has been done to the sets ? Are some of them 

 affected by disease or insects, and not others ? In my opinion 

 there is no occasion to have recourse either to disease or insects. 

 Weakness is the cause, and this weakness is produced by a slight 

 alteration which has taken place in the mode of management; 

 viz., that instead of potatoes being left in the ground till No- 

 vember, as used to be the case formerly, they are now taken up 

 in October to make way for wheat sowing, before the tubers are 

 sufficiently matured to be fit for separating into sets. As a proof 

 that the weakness thus produced is the cause of failure, I may 

 adduce the facts that the sets of early varieties of potatoes have 

 not been known to fail, and, also, that tubers of late potatoes, 

 when planted whole, generally succeed. In this last case the 

 whole of the vital energy of the tuber is concentrated in one bud 

 or shoot (for it is seldom that more than one shoot is produced 

 from a whole tuber, notwithstanding its number of buds), and, 

 therefore, a plant is produced ; but, when these buds are sepa- 

 rated, the proportion of vital energy assigned, as it were, to each, 

 is so small as to be ineffective in the production of a plant. 



Perhaps it may appear to some that what is now stated is in 

 contradiction to the theory which recommends taking up potatoes 

 that are intended for sets before they are fully ripe ; to which 

 I can only answer that this theory may be, and I believe is, quite 

 correct, and that the causes of failure above mentioned may be 

 considered as owing to that theory having been carried too far. 



I shall only further add, that the evil of too early taking up 

 may be greatly mitigated by immediately burying the tubers in 

 pits, instead of laying them up in heaps in houses covered with 

 dry straw, in which state they wither, and, if not sufficiently 

 matured, suffer such a diminution of their vital principle as to 

 be unfit for sets. — Brechin Nursery, November, 1834. 



Art. V. Floricultural and Botanical Notices of nevdy introduced 

 Plants, and of Plants of Interest previously in our Gardens, supple- 

 mentary to the latest Editions of the " EncyclopcBdia of Plants" 

 and of the " Hortus Britannicus" 



Curtis s Botanical Magazine ; in monthly numbers, each containing 

 eight plates ; 3*. 6d. coloured, Ss. plain. Edited by Dr. Hooker, 

 King's Professor of Botany in the University of Glasgow, 



Vol. XI No. 65. hh 



