18 
THE FLORAL WORLD AND GARDEN GUIDE. 
was not only disease-proof, but handsome, fine in quality, and wonder- 
fully prolific. You will ask, perhaps, why it was not reported on 
from several districts as a remarkably fine potato, and the answer is 
ready to hand. It was known to very few persons, and those few had 
(in common with myself) been supplied with seed by the raisers. 
When it becomes generally known, it will probably prove, for some 
fifteen years or so, the best of all potatoes. Nearly as good, and far 
in advance of the average of potatoes in the market, are Bell and 
Thorpe’s Sedilla and Clipper, of which we present figures. They 
are, as will be seen, neat kidney-shaped varieties. 
This brings us naturally enough into contact with Bell and 
Thorpe’s potatoes, and we are bound by duty to our readers, to say 
that they are the finest lot of seedlings we have ever had submitted 
to us for trial, and have furnished the largest number of any group 
in 1872 of disease proof potatoes. The raisers’ descriptions of 
them will serve as a guide to purchasers of seed potatoes, who, we 
trust, will carefully observe that we find some of Bell and Thorpe’s 
varieties as bad as other people’s. The words “ disease proof” and 
“ not disease proof ” are to be understood as affording the best 
possible estimate we can make of their probable values in a bad 
season. As there is no potato absolutely disease proof, and as on 
dry soils, some that suffer much on wet soils, escape unhurt, it will be 
seen that such au estimate as we make for our own guidance is com- 
parative and local, but as we judge potatoes on heavy land lying low, 
our estimates of goodness are perhaps severer than many other 
people’s would be, and perhaps for that reason the more useful to the 
public generally, as explained in the Bioeal Woeld last month. 
There are the very important preparatives for the crop of 1873 
now to be thought of. The land must be well prepared, and the 
seed must be the best possible. Most fortunate are those few who 
managed to trench up land in autumn for potato planting. For the 
dreadfol rain, rain, rain, prohibited the work almost universally. 
We can but say that opportunities must be made the most of, and 
the preparation of the land for potatoes should commence at the 
very instant that the ground is either sufficiently frozen or suffi- 
ciently dry to allow of deep digging. As to the seed, it should be 
prepared in daylight, and the simplest way is to put the selected 
tubers in boxes and baskets, and set them out on the floor of a loft, or 
any similarly dry and cool place where there is some amount of day- 
light. This mode of treatment will insure short, hard, purplish 
sprouts, full of vigour and ready to push freely when covered with 
kindly soil, but seed potatoes taken from sacks or clamps in which 
they have made long white sprouts are already debilitated, and have 
for the most part to make a quite new growth from dormant eyes, 
the white sprouts usually perishing as soon as the sets are planted. 
One more note must suffice for the present. The prevailing cus- 
tom of planting ])otatoes so close that the haulms become entangled, is 
an invitation to disease to come and ravage the field. The potato, 
more than any other plant in the garden, lives on sunshine, aud the 
planting should be so ordered that the whole plant is fully exposed 
to the light aud air, and the soil around it allowed to absorb the heat 
