MAINE AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 5 



tato growing as a late winter and early summer crop has come 

 to be an industry of considerable magnitude in certain southern 

 states. Under their climatic conditions potatoes rapidly dete- 

 riorate and it is necessary to secure new seed each year from 

 the north. Maine leads in furnishing this seed but New York, 

 Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota are important factors in 

 the trade and are bidding for it in every way possible. Since 

 Maine potatoes are shipped largely to all the important potato 

 growing sections from Texas north to New Jersey and Long 

 Island, we enter into competition with all of these states at 

 one point or another. In addition other northern states, Ver- 

 mont for example,, where the potato is a less important crop, 

 ship seed south to a certain extent. It will be seen then that 

 any potato disease which gains a foothold in any northern 

 locality stands a much greater chance of being widely distrib- 

 uted throughout the. country than ever before. 



Dr. W. A. Orton of the United States Department of Agri- 

 culture, being familiar with all these conditions in various parts 

 of the country and in Europe and realizing their importance to 

 the future development of the potato industry in America, con- 

 ceived the idea of inviting Geheimrat, Dr. Otto Appel, the lead- 

 ing authority on potato diseases in Germany, to come to this 

 country and make a survey of the more important northern 

 and western potato growing areas during the summer of 1914. 

 It was my good fortune to be a member of the party which 

 accompanied Dr. Appel on this trip from Maine to California. 



In every state we visited we were joined' by the plant patholo- 

 gists, horticulturists, agronomists and county experts or exten- 

 sion representatives of the . various agricultural colleges and 

 experiment stations. At each stop we were met by from several 

 to 50 or more practical potato growers who generously provided 

 automobiles for transportation, whereby we were enabled to 

 visit all the potato fields we had time to see while in that vicin- 

 ity. They often carried us a hundred miles or more along the 

 route of our journey by that means. From Maine to California 

 in about two months we covered some 14,000 miles, 1,200 of 

 which were by automobile. Our itinerary was so planned to 

 make as much of our railroad travel as possible at night or on 

 Sunday, therefore it will be seen that we spent a good share 

 of the day, six days in the week, during this time in potato fields. 



