October 3, 1889. ] 
JOURNAL OF HORTICULTURE AND COTTAGE GARDENER. 
287 
of the atmosphere to the best account by food tillage, giving an example 
of nutritious vegetation and the reverse, as influenced by manures in 
Dr. Hogg’s pasture as determined by the cows choosing one portion and 
rejecting the other, Mr. Wright said :— 
But what is manure, or the ingredients which cro^s abstract, and 
which, as Liebig says, are “ lost for ever,” if not replaced by man ? 
Whatare known as natural or animal manures employed in cultivation are 
obtained from vegetables, which, as Johnstonsays, contain “ ready formed, 
that is formed during their growth from the food on which they live, 
phosphate to form the bone, gluten to form the muscle, oil to produce 
fat.” Now if the food referred to is defective in the requisite con¬ 
stituents so must the animals be, and so must be the resulting manure. 
Such is the fact, and it is impossible to get nourishing food out of vege¬ 
tables that do not contain it, as they cannot if it is not in the soil, but 
as they certainly will if it is there and within their reach. 
Some persons condemn natural manure and extol the so-called arti¬ 
ficial ; others condemn the artificial and extol the natural. I think it 
is better to do neither, but to discriminate. Ville, the great French 
chemist, says land to which farmyard manure only is applied is being 
gradually exhausted, and that its fertility can be better maintained and 
crops better fed with the three ingredients—lime, potash, and phos¬ 
phoric acid in combination with nitrogenous manure. Professor Wright- 
son says farmyard manure has no equal. Stephens, in his “ Book of the 
Farm,” says a ton of first-class well made manure should contain be¬ 
tween 12 and 14 lbs. of nitrogen ; 11 to 15 lbs. of potash ; 8 to 9 lbs. of 
soluble salts of phosphoric acid (as in superphosphate) ; and 10 to 13 lbs. 
of insoluble phosphate, as in bones. As these are all the ingredients 
Ville asks for, and as the manure also acts mechanically in opening the 
soil, supplying silica, and eventually humus—which is the nursery of 
Bacteria or micro-organisms that render the nitrogen active by convert¬ 
ing into nitrates—such a mixture of good things must be long in ex¬ 
hausting the land. It will feed the land and the crops ; but—and here 
is the point—not one ton of manure in ten thousand equals, or even 
approaches, the standard named. The bulk of the material that gar¬ 
deners have to work with does not half equal it, and a vast quantity is 
but a poor apology for the genuine article—the husk without the kernel, 
a dead body from which the spirit has gone. 
Then come the value and the need of the concentrated essences 
known as artificials. Every gardener should have a supply of these, 
and he may then not only increase the produce of the soil, but improve 
it—storing the vegetables with food, without which, though they may 
be passable, they cannot be perfect. Phosphoric acid with potash, the 
former predominating, for the Brassica family ; potash with phosphates 
for the Legumes or pod-bearers, also Potatoes ; and nitrogen for every 
crop that needs a whip on to enable it the more freely and fully to abstract 
the substantial ingredients. With superphosphate of lime, chloride (or 
nitrate) of potash, the latter the more potent and costly, also nitrate of 
soda or sulphate of ammonia at hand, the gardener can improve his 
probably poor farmyard manure considerably, and indeed need not wait 
for it as so many men have to do till they lose their tempers and preju¬ 
dice their crops. 
When special manures are found to be good they contain the above 
named ingredients, and possibly others, which may act beneficially in 
certain soils; thus magnesia for Potatoes, soda for Asparagus and 
Carrots, and chlorine for Beet (both imparted by common salt), and a 
little iron for most crops. According to the experimenis of Dr. Griffiths, 
principal of the Lincoln School of Science, many soils do not contain 
sufficient of this ingredient. His “ Treatise on Manures,” which is an 
admirable work, contains striking examples of half cwt. of iron sulphate 
(green vitriol) per acre increasing the crop of Potatoes, Turnips, Man¬ 
golds, Cereals, and Beans, while it cured the stubborn root disease of 
Cucumbers (according to the evidence of Mr. Crocker, of Ham Green 
Tomato fame), and gave him extraordinary crops Passing for a moment 
from vegetables, Mr. Divers has recently stated in the “ Gardeners’ 
Chronicle ” its efficacy in curing a fine Peach tree of yellows. I have 
seen the tree, and can pronounce the cure complete. For vegetable 
crops about a quarter to the square yard will suffice for experimental 
purposes, either in solution or powder, this to be applied only when the 
soil is wet to yellowish-looking plants and crops for producing colouring 
matter or chlorophyll. 
But while the soil must be fed for feeding the crops it is possible to 
impair its productiveness by over-manuring, especially with matter 
from stables of milking cows, and decayed leaves. I once took 
possession of a garden that was like a mass of humus, through additions 
of that nature for generations, perhaps. A walking stick could be 
pushed down it to the handle easily. One plot, I was told, would grow 
Potato plants, but no tubers. I found that to be a fact, and recorded 
it in the Journal of Horticulture at the time. Peas were yellow and 
profitless. The soil was poisoned with acids, and lime was needed to 
neutralise them, also to set free the dormant nitrogen. It was given 
freely, as also was potash and bone meal. The effect was magical, and 
the crops of Potatoes and Peas, where they would not grow before, were 
remarkable. Why were potash and phosphates so much reeded ? 
Because there were none in the cowyard manure. The phosphates were 
drawn away with the milk. Manure from milch cows, especially if 
largely fed on grass and roots, is greatly over-estimated. There is little 
good in it to feed crops. It may make them grow, but the growth is 
comparatively worthless. Proof of this can be found in any cow pasture 
where the manure is not spread. The grass grows freely enough, but 
the animals refuse to eat it, and eventually tussocks form and pastures 
are spoiled. Manure from full-grown well-fed bullocks is very different, 
for it is rich in phosphates and other nutritive or manurial properties. 
It is well then, as I said before, to discriminate. 
If weak manure is supplied to the garden, and I have often had it 
so weak that it would not ferment when moist, mix half a peck or more 
of good guano in a load. The mass will soon heat then, and eventually 
its value for the land will be a good deal more than doubled. Instead 
of conflict between natural and artificial manures we then have combi¬ 
nation, and the union is a happy one for whatever crops are fed with 
the preparation. 
In conclusion the lecturer remarked :—Quick-acting nitrogenous 
manures, such as nitrate of soda and sulphate of ammonia (the former 
for light and dry, the latter for heavy and cold soils), should be applied 
early in the season to growing crops, never late in the autumn ; phosphatic 
and potassic manures earlier still, before growth commences and before 
dry summer weather sets in, or they cannot be appropriated, because not 
dissolved, by the crops they are intended to support. Chemical manures 
have often been condemned as worthless, when the fault rested with the 
users in simply applying what was really good at the wrong time for 
attaining the object in view. These remarks are founded on practice. 
I think they cannot do harm to any, and may possibly be suggestive to 
some who may engage in the cultivation of food-producing crops. 
POTATO IMPROVEMENTS DURING- THE PAST 
TWENTY-FIVE YEARS. 
[An abstract of the paper read by Mr. A. Dean.l 
Twenty-five years ago we had no great wealth of variety in the 
Potato, and it is a significant fact that, with the exception of the 
Ashleaf Kidney, a sort which has kept its place chiefly because hitherto 
there has been a lack of first early varieties, there is hardly to be found 
in seed Potato lists one then in ordinary cultivation. It is still very 
much the fashion on the part of those who sigh after the days and years 
that are gone to declare that none of the modem Potatoes equal in 
quality the Regents, Lapstones, Fortyfolds, and other sorts of the past. 
We have had since the date I refer to myriads of good Potatoes 
introduced and plenty of bad ones. We have myriads of good Potatoes 
now also, and a far less number of bad ones, and we have at least an 
abundance of varieties which, whilst equal in quality to the best of 
bygone days, do by far excel them in robustness and productiveness. 
The Potato really has improved—the eaters of them have become less 
capable of appreciating them. 
Then there has been no inconsiderable improvement in form and 
beauty. Those who saw, and remember, the singularly beautiful tubers 
shown at the various exhibitions held under the auspices of the Inter¬ 
national Potato Show Committee, must admit that in development of 
form wonders have been worked during the past twenty-five years. 
“ But,” exclaims the Potato pessimist, “ beauty of form and smoothness 
of skin is no evidence of quality 1” Perhaps not ; but, on the other 
hand, neither is ugliness. If we have had some beautiful Potatoes of 
bad quality we have also had myriads of good ones, and the efforts of 
the International Committee were specially directed to the elimination 
of the bad and the expansion of the good, not only at the Crystal 
Palace, but through the Royal Horticultural Society in their gardens 
also. Form and beauty, beyond satisfying the requirements of the 
cultivators of refined tastes, have become marketable commodities also, 
for the handsomest samples always secure the best prices. 
One of the chief factors in Potato development during the time 
previously named, however, was found in the introduction of American 
varieties. These came to us in myriads, generally characterised by 
similarity of appearance, but varying perhaps in colour. All were 
remarkable croppers, and if few possessed high quality or flavour, yet 
all did materially help to swell our Potato supplies. How many of 
these varieties introduced at the time with much flourish of trumpets 
have now gone to the eternal Potato bourne our lists of to-day will 
serve to show. Just one or two remain to us in their natural form and 
goodness, chief amongst which is the favourite Beauty of Hebron ; the 
best perhaps, as it has been the most permanent of all the family. But 
our home raisers awakened to the need of doing something to counteract 
the flooding of our trade with American sorts, and further, alive to the 
value of these strangers as parents of better strains, they utilised the 
best for seed-bearing purposes, fairly skimming the cream off them and 
casting the residue aside as worthless. 
Our esteemed friend, Mr. Robert Fenn, who had at Woodstock been 
raising varieties which were perfect in quality, but lacking in robustness 
and productiveness, was one of the first to utilise Americm varieties as 
parents. Many others presently followed suit, with the result, briefly 
put, that dispensing with all old sorts, and nearly all American varieties, 
we have a race of Potatoes which is productive, robust, gives good 
quality, and supplies the tables of the poorest in the land cheaply and 
abundantly. But apart from the Americans, which in spite of their 
comparative robustness still succumbed wholesale to the deadly effects 
of the Peronospora, there was this very fungus with all its dire 
destructiveness constantly forcing upon Potato men the need for battling 
with it for the preservation of our Potato stocks. It is idle to regard it 
as other than a terrible and a disastrous visitation, and in years past 
when we had none other to depend upon but Regents, Fortyfolds, 
Victorias, and similar tender though delicious varieties, there was at 
times reason to fear that the Potato crops of the kingdom would be 
absolutely decimated. 
One of the first products of the Anglo-American Potato crosses was 
that famous variety, Magnum Bonum. Its history is pretty well known; 
