THE POTATO. 181 
caster, to promote incipient vegetation in some warm place, 
as a house or green-house, by laying a woolen cloth or some 
other covering over them. When the sprouts are about 
two inches long, he plants them out towards the end of 
March, and thus procures young potatoes in seven or eight 
weeks. In some places, the plants are forced to some ex- 
tent, by being protected in frames covered with oiled paper. 
.A secondary planting of tubers should be made before the 
middle of April. When the stems are a few inches above 
ground, the earth should be drawn to them; an operation, 
however, which, while it improves the crop, delays its ma- 
turity for two or three weeks. Mr. Knight recommends re- 
moving the flowers as they appear, and states that by this 
means the produce is increased by a ton peracre. The fine 
early varieties, however, scarcely produce any flowers. 
An important fact in the cultivation of the potato was 
observed about the year 1806, by the late Mr. Thomas 
Dickson, of Edinburgh, viz., that the most healthy and 
productive plants were to be obtained by employing as 
seed-stock unripe tubers, or even by planting only the wet 
or least-ripened ends of long-shaped potatoes; and he pro- 
posed this as a preventive of the well-known disease called 
the Curl. This view was confirmed by the late Mr. Knight. 
An intelligent writer in the Gardener's Magazine sug- 
gests a method by which sprouting of the eyes is accelerat- 
ed. He takes up the seed potatoes a considerable time be- 
fore they are ripe, and exposes them for some weeks to the 
influence of a scorching sun. The resulting crop is at 
least a fortnight earlier; but itis not said how this prac- 
tice affects the curl.* 
* It is not thought necessary here to enter on the subject of the very gene- 
ral potato disease of 1845 and 1846. Notwithstanding numerous inquiries 
and publications, nothing satisfactory, either as to cause or cure, hag 
been established, and, fortunately, the evil is gradually disappearing. 
