20 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
[January, 
ten or twelve years old, who can drive the 
team, may sit upon the seat and slide him¬ 
self from one side to the other as a weight. 
A light man may occupy the seat if he does 
not weight the harrow too much for his team. 
The harrow is very strong, and should it 
be desirable to knock to pieces and smooth 
off a piece of veiy rough land reasonably 
free from large stones and stumps of roots, 
let a man sit upon the seat, and with three 
English Potatoes and Potato Shows. 
The fact that the climate of the British Isles 
is more favorable to the development of the 
potato rot than our own, makes it a matter 
of the first importance to secure varieties of 
potatoes that resist, so far as may be, this de¬ 
structive malady. Both in this country and in 
England the first wholesale devastation of the 
rot (about 1845) awoke great interest in the 
THE MONROE CIRCULAR HARROW. 
or four horses, drive them at a trot over 
the ground. The work done will be a marvel. 
"When used with the sowing attachment 
the seeder is regulated to sow evenly, and 
the proper quantity, when the harrow laps 
properly on its former track ; thus the whole 
ground is both seeded and harrowed at one 
operation, making exceedingly even work. 
The seeder is novel and very ingenious, the 
motion being communicated by a compound- 
cam movement upon the top of the harrow. 
The seat, adjustable weight, and seed-sow¬ 
ing attachment are recently patented im¬ 
provements, which add much to the effi¬ 
ciency and convenience of the harrow. It 
is now possible to adjust the amount of 
weight earned, as well as its position, thus 
easily adapting the harrow to its work, 
as well as to the strength of the team. 
A Rotary Cultivator. 
When at the South the extraordinary effi¬ 
cacy of the implement as a weeder was 
discovered, and “ narrow gauge ” harrows, 
with plow handles, were made to use as 
cultivators between corn and cotton rows, 
they proved a great success, and Mr. Mon¬ 
roe states that they are in demand where- 
ever known. Their smaller diameter gives 
them a greatly accelerated motion, hence 
their action on the soil, and their pulveriz¬ 
ing power is proportionally increased. The 
good results of applying the rotary prin¬ 
ciple to cultivation between rows has led to 
the construction of an implement of inter¬ 
mediate size. This has great strength, it has 
long strong teeth, and is a thorough tiller or 
scarifier. It is a two-horse implement, which 
is to be well weighted, and intended, among 
to her uses, to be applied to preparing fallow 
ground for spring grain or grass without 
plowing, and judging from the other we have 
no doubt it will do it well and rapidly. 
potato, and since then the production of new 
varieties on both sides of the Atlantic has 
continued with most beneficial results. It 
was our good fortune to visit the Seventh An¬ 
nual Potato Show, held at Crystal Palace, 
near London, the latter part of September 
last. The display of 2,500 dishes by 97 exhib¬ 
itors indicated that the interest in potatoes 
was still maintained; the dishes, arranged on 
long counters and decorated with ferns and 
other greenery, presented a most attractive 
appearance. The leading contribution was 
made by the Messrs. Sutton, the noted seeds¬ 
potatoes. While American varieties often 
succeed fairly in England, English varieties 
are, as a rule, entirely unsuited to our coun¬ 
try. A few years ago we planted some 20 of 
the then leading English varieties. They 
were in the same soil and had the same treat¬ 
ment as our regular crop of American, sorts. 
At digging, while our own varieties gave ex¬ 
cellent crops, the English sorts were so badly 
rotted as not to be worth digging. It is 
not too much to say that the lead¬ 
ing potato at present in England is 
the “Magnum Bonum” of Messrs. 
Sutton. While this firm have other 
varieties, such as their “Red-skin 
Flour-ball,” “Woodstock Kidney,” 
“Reading Abbey,” “Early Hammer¬ 
smith Kidney,” etc., each prominent 
for some good quality, this seems 
to have met with such general suc¬ 
cess as to warrant the claim that it 
is “ the most useful potato for gener¬ 
al cultivation.” It was produced in 
1871 by a Mr. Clark, of Christchurch, 
and has each year since given a good 
account of itself. The popularity 
of the “ Magnum Bonum ” is shown 
by the fact that for the special prize 
a silver medal, offered for this va¬ 
riety, there were no less than 53 en¬ 
tries. A collection sent from Prussia 
was interesting, as showing the man¬ 
ner of estimating the value of pota¬ 
toes in different countries. In Eng¬ 
land, as with us, a dinner without 
potatoes would be considered incom¬ 
plete ; it is not so on the continent,, 
where they are not regarded as any more es¬ 
sential than any other vegetable. Potatoes, 
in Germany and France are largely raised 
for the production of distilled spirits—alcohol 
in some form, hence the collection referred 
to had each variety labelled, not with the 
yield, or the table quality, but with the pro¬ 
portion of starch it produced, as an indication 
of the value in distillation. Messrs. Sutton & 
Co. kindly forwarded to us engravings of 
their leading varieties of potatoes ; we can 
make room for but one of these, the “ Mag¬ 
num Bonum,” as our potato growers will be- 
THE “MAGNUM BONUM” POTATO. 
men of Reading, who exhibited 118 varieties, 
occupying a third of the whole space of the 
show. Of the leading American varieties 
there were but few, but there were several 
exhibited as “American” which we had 
never heard of at home. The impression 
made by this show was, that England and 
America require very different varieties of 
interested in knowing what the leading 
English variety is like, and especially because 
we have recently heard that a trial made with 
this variety in this country the past summer 
has, contrary to expectation and the usual 
way with English sorts, given most satisfac¬ 
tory results, in both quality and quantity, the- 
particulars of which we hope soon to receive.. 
