Make Childhood Sweet. 
ait not till the little hands are at rest 
Ere you fill them full of flowers; 
Wait not for the crowning tuberose 
To make sweet the last sad hours; 
But while in the busy household band, 
Your darlings still need your guiding hand, 
Oh ! fill their lives with sweetness ! 
Wait not till the little hearts are still 
For the loving look and phrase; 
But while you gently’chide a fault, 
The good deed kindly praise. 
The words you would speak beside the bier, 
Fall sweeter far on the living ear— 
Oh ! fill young lives with sweetness ! 
Ah ! what are kisses on clay-cold lips, 
To the rosy mouth we press, 
When our wee ones fly to our mother’s arms, 
For love’s tenderest caress ? 
Let never a wordly bauble keep 
You? heart from the joy each day should reap, 
Circling young lives with sweetness. 
Give thanks each morn for the sturdy boys, 
Give thanks for the fairy girls; 
With a dower of wealth like this at home, 
Would you rifle the earth for pearls ? 
Wait not for death to gem love’s crown, 
But daily shower life’s blessing down, 
And fill young hearts with sweetness, 
Remember the homes where the light'has fled. 
Where the rose has faded away. 
And the love that glows in youthful hearts, 
Oh ! cherish it while you may; 
And make your home a garden of flowers, 
Where joy shall bloom through childhood’s hours. 
And fill young lives with sweetness. 
How are New Varieties of Pota¬ 
toes Produced ? 
The above question is asked by -*D. W.,” 
Lee Co., Iowa, who follows it with: “Can 
you give the manner of fertilizing, the time 
to fertilize, and the time to plant the seed 
ball '? Many of the well-known varieties of 
potatoes have not been ‘-produced” at all • 
that is, not by any direct agency of the cul¬ 
tivator. We must in the first place state 
that the potato is not a root , bat a short 
thick under ground branch of the plant 
We have several times seen, and no doubt 
many of our readers have also, the branches 
of the potato vine developed as potatoes 
above ground. We must start with the 
idea, then, that the potato is really a branch 
or stem. It is a well established fact 
among fruit growers and florists, that a 
shoot or branch of a plant may produce 
very different fruits or flowers from the 
rest of the plant, and this occurs without 
any assignable cause, and without any hu¬ 
man agency. These cases, by horticul¬ 
turists called -‘sports,” are very numerous. 
A late peach has been known to produce a 
branch on which all the fruit was early. 
Other peach trees have formed branches 
which bore only nectarines—merely a sport 
of the peach. Certain branches on yellow 
plum trees have produced red plums, and 
shoots on purple grape-vines have borne 
white grapes. In flowers, especially roses, 
these varieties are very numerous. We 
only cite these cases to show what may 
take place, indeed, has taken place, in the 
potato. The tuber being really a branch, it 
may, like a branch of the peach, plum, or 
grape, vary. A notable example of this is 
the “Late Rose.” In a field of “Early 
Rose,” a single plant was found to be green 
and still growing long after the vines in the 
rest of the field were dead and ready for 
the harvest. The owner had the good 
sense to save and perpetuate the product of 
this vine, and now, as the “Late Rose,” it is 
one of our valuable kinds. Other varieties 
have been produced in a similar manner. 
We cannot cause this variation to take 
place, but as it may occur anywhere, the 
careful cultivator should take note of any 
marked differences in the vines that mav 
appear in his potato field. 
As to raising new varieties from seed, we 
doubt if much actual cross fertilization has 
ever betn done.. To refer to fruits agrain— 
the seeds of the apples or the peaches from 
any one tree, taken as they are, without 
any attempt at fertilization, will give a 
g’-’eat variety of seedlings, and we know it 
to be the same with potatoes. That great¬ 
est of all modern potatoes—greatest in it¬ 
self and in varieties it has given rise to— 
the “Early Rose. ’ came from a chance seed 
ball, of the coarse but prolific --Garnet 
Chili.” A grower had picked this seed ball 
from his patch without selection, and pin¬ 
ned it against his window to ripen, and fi¬ 
nally gave it to Mi-. Breese—of blessed 
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