THE POTATO AND ITS CULTURE. 
525 
compared with the selections in his former 
works, and we do not hesitate to say, it is by 
far the best volume of the three. 
THE POTATO AND ITS CULTURE. 
Among the various articles of food on which 
we seem all but dependent, the Potato holds 
a prominent place; and, strange as it may seem, 
though millions of tons are grown, not half-a- 
dozen writers can agree as to the best mode 
of culture, nor as to the causes of failure 
which seems to visit every year some unfor- 
tunate grower or other, and sometimes a good 
many of them. Among all the histories and 
treatises that we have seen, scarcely one of 
them agree with our practice, nor do any lay it 
down as a profitable mode of culture. Nearly 
all large growers are wedded to the plan of 
cutting good Potatoes into as many sets as 
they conveniently can, and not one in ten do 
this until the Potato is in a state of growth. 
In all stages of growth the nearer we can 
imitate nature in her main operations the 
better; improve upon them, to meet particular 
circumstances, we may, but violate her with 
impunity we cannot. Well, then, it stands to 
reason that whole sets must be more natural 
than cut ones. What are the circumstances, 
then, which induce, or, as some say, compel, us 
to use cut sets, when whole ones are more 
natural ? Why, the economy of the operation, 
the saving of seed. If ^whole sets, of half a 
pound each, were to be placed at the usual 
distance, that which would plant half-a-dozen 
sets is consumed to plant one. But why use 
half pound Potatoes ? why not use small 
Potatoes ? A set as large as a walnut for 
pickling, if accidentally left in the ground 
when the crop is dug up, yields an abundant 
crop, braving the frosts of winter, and show- 
ing more health and vigour than almost any 
regularly planted set that has been cut. After 
all that has been said and written upon the 
subject of the feint, as it is called, and other 
visitations which will ere long have fashionable 
names to them, we hear nothing from one but 
what contradicts another, and we are left in a 
sort of glorious confusion. It may be saying but 
little, to say that we never cut a set, and never 
had a failure, because the non-failure may be 
perfectly unconnected with the fact of plant- 
ing whole sets. The ridiculous experiments 
tried with Potato parings, instead of the Po- 
tato itself, would have been sadly censured had 
they been tried by anybody but the President 
of the Horticultural Society, and all that 
could by any possible chance have been gained 
by the experiment, was to show with how 
little of the starch the eyes would germinate ; 
and how anybody might peel their Potatoes to 
eat, and set the parings for a crop ; a plan 
which might have been handy for starch- 
makers, but not very useful to the cottager, 
who would find it as inconvenient to keep all 
his Potatoes till the planting season, as it 
would to peel all he intended to eat the rest 
of the year. But, while the President of the 
Horticultural Society was experimentalizing on 
Potato parings, we were doing some yet more 
curious things; we raised Potatoes, and a good 
many of them, without cutting the Potato, or 
disturbing the peel : we set them to work like 
a Dahlia. The instant the shoots were an 
inch long we rubbed them off, struck them in 
a hot-bed, and established them in forty-eight 
sized pots, and in this way obtained as many 
as two hundred plants from one Potato, which 
was as large, and to all appearance as plump, 
as when we begun. When they were planted 
out, in June, the balls were turned out whole, 
and there was even in the pots a good pro- 
mising crop of small Potatoes. This esta- 
blished the fact that we have always contended 
for, which is, that in every atom of a plant 
there are the germs of every portion of a 
plant, and that the necessary conditions for 
their development have only to be supplied by 
art or nature. Here one of the small white 
shoots from a Potato is put into a small pot, 
with heat, and we have the plant complete in 
all its parts, stems, leaves, flowers, fruit, and 
tubers. We go further, we say that some cir- 
cumstances develop the germs of leaf, or fruit, 
or flower, while those of the corresponding 
organs are destroyed or blighted. Hence 
come monstrosities, which are absurdly quoted 
as proofs that one organ turns into another. 
On taking up this crop, there was every reason 
to be satisfied with the result ; the Potatoes 
were fine, and a good average produce. To 
expect that the Potato will grow equally well 
on all soils would be out of all character ; but 
there are certain rules of culture which cannot 
be too well attended to; and although we do not 
object to cut sets, if done properly and at 
a proper season, we deny the saving part 
of the affair, and insist that the largest of 
the pig Potatoes, or such as are considered 
so, make excellent whole sets. But there 
is a proper and an improper time to cut them, 
and the want of attention- to this causes 
one-half the disease that is among the crops of 
this excellent vegetable. The necessity of 
cutting sets at times, in consequence of the 
scarcity of seed Potatoes, or the large size of 
the only ones that can be got, must be admitted; 
and there are people who never for one moment 
think about their seed until it is in an unfit 
state to use; for Potatoes cannot be fit to cut 
when they are in a state of germination ; yet 
we see pits uncovered where the tubers hare 
thrown out shoots a foot or more long. 
