276 
On the Cultivated Potato. 
a Fellow of the Royal Society, a man of determined accuracy, 
six years previously he had planted in hillocks, 6 feet asunder, 
a new potato fresh from America ; each set produced from 26 lbs. 
to 27^ lbs. Single potatoes became so large, he was obliged to 
plant in 3 feet drills to reduce the size. When I stript a stem 
I found, he said, the tuber died ; in outside rows and hillocks the 
plants do best, there is more sun and air ; wet summers, he says, 
benefit the potato, but then it must be remembered there was 
plenty of space. Mr. Howard's drills were 3 feet distant and 
cuttings 3 feet asunder : these distances I have in my own 
experience found advantageous. 
In France potato cultivation was originally very unpopular ; 
Louis XVI., in 1785, had great difficulty in establishing 
it as a guarantee against famine. A close observer, Par- 
mentier,* who introduced the potato into France, accurately 
described the potato disease now known as the disease of 1845 ; 
but until the great outbreak, 1845, '46, the atmospheric con- 
ditions had been more local than general. The next year, 
|]1786], a correspondent under the initials J. H. wrote to the 
' Gentleman's Magazine ' asking for the natural history of the 
potato — " Can't find any satisfaction in any book : Whence ? 
When ? What ? We know nothing of the causes that improve, 
nothing of those which degenerate?" Under every combina- 
tion of all the letters of the alphabet the same querj' in our 
day might well be propounded. In the ' Hortus Americanus,' t 
by Dr. Henry Barham, an author of whom Sir Hans Sloane 
spoke highly, it is said that potatoes grow in America in most 
parts in great plenty, but as they put nothing for them to run 
on, they creep and spread on the ground, destroying the grass : the 
potato is a cheap bread-stuff food for both white and black. We 
have now reached the commencement of the era of really greedy 
cultivation ; the Parliamentary Board of Agriculture, in the 
alarming crisis of 1795, offer a premium of lOOOZ. for the 
largest breadth of potatoes grown on land never before so ap- 
plied. Then there is much about varieties, some say the kidney 
is liable to curl ; the Surinam, it was asserted, never curls. 
Dibbling on grass mentioned ; there are directions for the ap- 
plication of 20 tons of manure per acre ; the sets to be dropped 
• Parmentier, " Traits sur la culture, &c., des pommes do terrc, Paris, 1789." 
Brit. Museum [Sir Joseph Banks's Copy] 452, e. 30. " Des que Ics pluios sont 
abondantes a re'poque de la plantation ou dc la rcJcolte, Ics pommes de terre 
noye'es d'eau pourrisscnt bientot, si les terrains auxquels on les confio sont de la 
nature glaiseuse, propre Ji retenir I'liumiditc, et a la rassenibler en masso ; nlors 
lea tubercules parsemds de points blancs et brillants, ao(iuierent la consistance 
d'une p&te liquide semblable a dc la bouillie, et ila cxhalent una odeur iufecte," 
p. 59. 
t ' Gentleman's Magazine,' 1795, p. 844. 
