HORTICULTURAL JOURNAL. 119 
all summer and this fall we have eaten potatoes no larger than walnuts • 
these, of which I send you a sample, Mr. M. paid no attention to ; it was a 
notion of mine ; last spring I took the notion to plant potatoes in my poultry 
yard, a place I have to shut up my chickens during the summer, to prevent 
their injuring the garden, corn, etc.; I feed them until they can no lono-er 
do injury. I thought it was pity to leave the piece of ground useless. Mr. 
M. finding that, as fast as the potatoes grew, the chickens bit off the tops ; 
said it was not even worth while ploughing them, hut I thought otherwise 
and hoed them ; they still grew, and Mr. M. ploughed them afterwards, not 
for the potatoes, but because, being fond of eggs, he found the ground had 
become too hard for the chickens to pick worms, etc. This fall he said 
they were not worth digging ; but, as he got sick, and I had to do all, I 
determined to try my potatoes, and, to my utter astonishment, every hill 
contained from five to eight of the size I send ; and I would have sent you 
more, but I think they will make the box weigh heavy more than they are 
worth; a number more of quite large potatoes, none very small. The poultry 
yard is on the front road, and many persons, passing as I was diggincr, 
stopped and inquired what kind they were. The same kind, planted in very 
rich and good ground, where Mr. M. expected a great crop, proved hardly 
worth digging, so small and so few. Now, my dear Mary Ann, what do 
you attribute this to ? I believe that the chickens keeping the tops eat 
down, as it were, prevented the heat of the sun from burning them as it did 
all the other crops ; the constant scratching, too, of the hens prevented the 
bugs, etc., from injuring them. I shall certainly make the trial again, and 
plant of the largest ; again having the idea the chickens would scratch, 
we planted deep, and in the whole spot, off which we got about ten bushels 
(it being a small place), we did not find one rotten one. Perhaps you will 
laugh at me, and say they are not uncommonly large, but I cannot recollect 
ever seeing such in Philadelphia. I wish I had thought of it in time, and 
tried to get some sweet potatoes ; perhaps I might raise some there ; now it 
would be too late ; they would freeze on the way. I think from Pittsburgh 
I could get some in the spring in time ; I will try. 
ROTATION OF FOREST TREES. 
There are millions of acres of pine forests which present an even surface 
for tillage, whose improvement for continued and profitable cultivation is a 
matter of great moment. If their virgin soils do not exhibit an acid reaction, 
they at least possess too little of alkaline ingredients for high agricultural 
productiveness. We have been astonished at the benefits that accrued from 
the application of marl and shell lime to these -virgin earths, in which there 
was no lack of organic substances. Where the potash came from, that 
existed in such large crops of wheat and corn, appeared a mystery. Lime 
