236 NEBRASKA STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



Good cultivation and good ground are not the only essentials for a 

 good yield. There must be good seed as well. 



Smooth potatoes are preferable to irregular branched ones, or to 

 those having deep eyes, because less is lost in preparing them for food. 

 The starch grains seem to be most numerous in the cells next the 

 epidermis, and in taking thick parings, as is necessary when the 

 tubers are rough and irregular, too much of the nutriment is lost. 



DISCUSSION. 



Day — I much prefer 100 bushels to the acre to 400, if prices re- 

 main as they are now. How do you cut your potatoes? 



Smith — We plant one eye to a piece, one foot apart in the row ; 

 we use large potatoes for seed. 



Carpenter — I raise 400 to 600 bushels per acre at my farm ; 

 this year I used seed from Pennsylvania — Early Ohio and O. K. 

 Mammoth. Plant in bottom of deep furrow fourteen inches apart, 

 rows four feet. 



Professor Hicks— Those potato stories put me in mind of some 

 big fish stories. From Colorado come reports of 800 to 1,500 bush- 

 els per acre, but these cannot be true, as the American agriculturist 

 prize potato crop this last year was only 700 bushels to one measured 

 acre. 



WOULD THE ESTABLISHMENT OF EXPERIMENT 

 STATIONS BE A BENEFIT TO OUR STATE? 



President — We must now take up the subject of experiment 

 stations. Mr. Brown, what have you to say on the subject ? 



Brown — I am not well enough posted to say very much concern- 

 ing this subject, but I think horticultural experiment stations can do 

 a vast amount of good if conducted properly. At present we ought 

 to have, and I think could get along with about three stations, one in 

 the northwest, one in the southwest, and one in the extreme western 

 part of the state. Here in the eastern part we have many varieties 

 that have been amply tested and proven to be good, but in the sections 

 I have named, nothing, or comparatively nothing, has been tried, and 

 the people are generally too poor to waste money in experimenting; 



