Cultivation of the Potato. 
351 
evaporation * eniitted from the soil to unite with the atmospLeie 
about the plants, I cannot positively say, but I strongly sus- 
pect the latter is the cause of such a difference being effected 
in so short a time by the operation. However this may be, it is 
quite certain from experiments that I have made, that there is no 
operation that is practised in culiivating the soil v.hich better re- 
pays the cultivator than judicious hoeing; and yet there is scarce 
anything so much neglected ! 
The best soil for potatoes is a rich light mellow sand or brash, 
enriched with manure. But if we have none of these at our com- 
mand, we must endeavour by artificial means to render what we 
have as similar as we can. Some few years ago, when in Chelten- 
ham, a gentleman laid me a wager that I did not grow 9 pecks of 
potatoes from 9 rods of ground, and that what I did grow would not 
be eatable. The land was a complete clay-marl, having had all 
the top loam taken off^ two or three years previous. The gentle- 
man had planted potatoes on it once in the usual way, and met 
with a complete failure. I proceeded in a manner not known in 
that neighbourhood, and was laughed at for my experiment. 
About the beginning of March I got a good cart-load of un- 
fermented horse-dung, which cost 7s. : this I had well dug in 
among the soil, and left the lop as rough as possible, for the sun 
and air to pulverize it. I left it in this state until the second 
week in April, which happened to be very fine ; 1 then levelled 
the surface, and marked it out in beds 6 feet wide ; down 
the beds I put two rows of potatoes about 3 feet apart and 6 
inches in the row ; between the beds I dug out trenches, the 
same as for celery, and covered the sets about 4\ inches deep; 
they were kept well hoed, and what was the result? Why, in- 
stead of 9 pecks of useless potatoes, I had 7h sacks of most 
excellent ones ; the sorts were the ash-leaf kidney, the prolific, 
and the gold-pine. I got the crop off" in August, and immedi- 
ately sowed store-turnips on one half, and planted the other with 
kail, and in November I had the satisfaction to see a most excel- 
lent crop of turnips and kail on the same piece of ground, being 
the second crop the same season on the land that I had been told 
in the spring would produce nothing ; and I am quite certain 
there are thousands of acres now pronounced valueless, that might 
be turned to good account in the same manner with little expense 
beyond what would be repaid the first year or two. 
Whatever may be said against unfermented manure by theorists, 
* I have always found that a lew handfuls of maiden loam strewed 
among plants that are sickly and their foliage turned yellow, will in an 
almost incredible short time restore to them their dark green healthy 
appearance ; neither have I ever found any other substance that works the 
same effect in so short time, not even charcoal itself. 
