CHAPTER II. 
Cultivation of the Potatoe. 
Ir was not till 1771 and 1772, that the practice of cultivat- 
ing potatoes as a field crop began to acquire supporters; but 
at that time all the grain crops failed, and the famine which 
ensued led to the discovery that proper and sufficient nour- 
ishment might be derived from those very potatoes which 
had hitherto only been regarded as a luxury, just as well as 
from bread. Still its cultivation did not exceed the wants of 
man himself. It was not till a later period that the practice 
of giving the refuse and surplus to the cattle began to creep 
in. But it was thus gradually discovered that potatoes might 
be advantageously cultivated as food for live stock. Bergen, 
in his “Introduction to the Management of Live Stock,” was 
the first to recommend the practice of this cultivation on a 
large scale, and the use of a kind of horn hoe to saye manual 
labor. At the present day it appears scarcely credible that 
the extreme utility of this plant should have so long remain- 
ed unknown, and that so much difference of opinion should 
have existed on the propriety of raising it on extensive tracts 
of land. 
“There is no plant,” says Thaer, in his “Principles of 
Agriculture,” “to which I have paid greater attention than 
to the potatoe. Even before I entered upon the practice of 
agriculture, my attention was excited by the innumerable 
varieties which were produced by raising it from seed. I 
