43S8 
leaf bad the appearance of having been slightly- 
frozen. Knowing that there had been no 
signs of frost, I was desirous of learning the 
cause of the blight. Upon examination I 
found underneath the leaf an insect so nearly 
the color of the plant that it would hardly be 
observed but for its movements. Not having 
heard, read of or seen the like before I was at a 
loss what to do to destroy what I called the 
green louse. Consequently I did nothing, 
and as a result i here was almost a total failure 
of the crop, as ther ewere no further blossoms, 
there was a general shrinkage of all the pods 
—those nearly matured in size remained so 
without further growth ; those setting and 
forming withered. We have had a severe 
frost—one sufficient to kill vines not protected 
or covered. It would have injured Limas 
but no injury has been done thisyear; for be¬ 
fore the frost the leaves were blackened—even 
the vines were covered with spots similar to rust. 
How general this affection is I cannot tell, 
but I learn that In neighboring towns of the 
county the same insect has destroyed the 
uxury of garden vegetables. Cleveland. 
Steuben Co., N. y. 
105 
THE MYSTERY ABOUT POTATOES. 
b hcertainty of the crop; diffevent results 
under similar conditions; better yields 
under unfavorable than favorable circum¬ 
stance ?a mode of preventing blight; 
ground too rich for the crop; potatoes 
grown under straw. 
There is probably no crop more talked 
about among farmers in ordinary conversa¬ 
tion, or oftener discussed in the agricultural 
press than potatoes. This is not owing merely 
to the fact that they are raised more or less 
extensively on every farm, supply a consid¬ 
erable portion of every farmer’s income, and 
are to be found as a palatable dish on every 
man’s table, Dut because of their contradictory 
behavior under apparently similar conditions 
as regards soil, tillage and weather, and be¬ 
cause of the yet undiscovered reason for their 
blight and decay. The truth seems to be 
that they are not always governed by fixed 
habits and natural laws of growth, but some¬ 
times do well under certain conditions of 
weather and treatment, and again do poorly 
under apparently the same conditions and 
treatment. I havejinown potatoes to do well 
some droughty seasons, and to do poorly in 
other seasons of the same kind; to do well in 
some wet summers, and to rot terribly in 
other wet summers. They are usually grate¬ 
ful for good cultivation, but will sometimes 
produce well without it. My father planted 
about an acre of potatoes ou a hill-side of mod¬ 
erate slope which had been in clover, but the 
clover had run out, and the sod was Timothy. 
Some manure was spread and the ground 
was plowed. The team had been idle and 
wanted to go too fast, the ground was a little 
stony, and the plowman, if he knew how to 
plow, did not care how he did it. The plow 
was out of the ground half the time, and he 
did not back up to plow the balks; in fact the 
field was not half plowed. It was harrowed 
and planted in the fore part of May. 
No care was taken in the selection of seed. 
Medium-size potatoes were cut into four pieces 
and the small ones were not cut at all. They 
were plowed and hoed but twice. The weed 
seeds in the manure must have been destroyed 
by fermentation, for the field was not weedy. 
There was nothing about the seed, the plowing 
or the cultivation that gave any promise of a 
good crop, but it was the best acre of potatoes 
I ever saw dug. Since then I have frequently 
tried that same field with potatoes in favor¬ 
able seasons, taking great pains in the selection 
of seed, plowing, planting and cultivation,but 
have never obtained anything like that first 
prodigious yield, when no pains at all had 
been taken. I do not think that the poor 
plowing aud the little cultivation they re¬ 
ceived made that first crop so good; it was 
8°od in spite of neglect. But why was it 
good? 
Once I manured part of a potato field and 
left a part without any manure. After hay¬ 
ing came on the cultivation was neglected, 
and the part of the field where the manure 
was put got very weedy. I set a man at dig¬ 
ging who did not know where the manure 
was put, or whether any part of the lot had 
been manured. I asked him at night how the 
potatoes were turning out. “Pretty good,” 
said he, “but they are a great deal the best 
where the weeds are the highest!” It is true 
that both potatoes and the weeds were the 
biggest where the manure was put. It is not 
likely that the weeds helped the potatoes; 
they would probably have been still better if 
the weeds had been kept down. Another time 
I had potatoes on a field that was all manured, 
but part of the manure must have been full of 
weed seeds, chiefly the big smart-weed. At 
digging time some parts of the field were very 
weedy and other parts entirely clean. There 
was not much difference in the size of the 
potatoes where the ground was weedy, or 
where it was not, but the surprising thing 
about it was that where the weeds were the 
highest, there were scarcely any rotten pota¬ 
toes, but where the ground was clean and there 
were no weeds, more than half the potatoes 
were rotten and generally the largest ones in 
the hill. It was the blight or black-rot. 
There was no possible mistake about the pota¬ 
toes being very much the soundest among the 
weeds. The digger told me about it, and loath 
to believe it, I investigated the matter thor¬ 
oughly and found it to be a fact, as he Stated. 
Any person by merely walking over the field 
after the potatoes were dug, could see by the 
rotten potatoes left on the ground, that they 
grew where the ground was clean. 
Why this should be so I cannot tell; but it 
would seem to corroborate the theory of the 
^ ermont man who claims to have discovered 
a preventive for the potato blight by covering 
the hills with a mulch of straw or paper, to 
shade the potatoes and shield them from the 
scalding rays of the sun after a rain. He 
states that an old hen turkey made her nest 
on a hill of potatoes and sat there to hatch 
the tops would allow it. There was the most 
luxuriant growth of top I ever saw, not so 
very large in diameter, but of enormous 
length. They were more like vines running 
over the ground than potato tops. I flattered 
myself, while they were growing, that I 
should have a crop to boast of; but to my 
disappointment, when dug, they were found 
to be good for nothing, being very small, but 
few in a hill, and not worth digging. Do you 
say there was too much nitrogen in the soil ? 
1 do not profess to know. I know the pota¬ 
toes v\ ere poor, when in all reason they ought 
to have been good. According to my exper¬ 
ience, sod ground that has produced potatoes 
one year, will produce a better crop next 
year. I planted an acre on thick Timothy 
sod; the plowing and tillage were good; 
the season was good, and the potatoes 
were fair. I planted the same ground 
with potatoes again the noxt year, and broke 
up another acre of the same field adjoining it 
and planted it at the same time, with the 
same kind of seed. Both acres received the 
same cultivation and neither had any fertil¬ 
izer. The potatoes on the part that had pro¬ 
duced potatoes the year before were rather 
better than they had been the year previous 
and better than those raised on the sod-ground. 
One would naturally suppose that a crop of 
potatoes would extract from the soil some of 
the most available and valuable constituents, 
and that the second crop, not finding so ready 
THE PLUME-LIKE JAPAN RETINISPORA.-From a Photograph. Fig. 327. 
around the earth, like the storms of rain ai d 
wind overhead,'[has as much to do with the 
successful growth’of vegetation, and especially 
of potatoes, as air and water. It is 5 to be 
hoped that the Rural New-Yorker, with 
abund ant means at its" com mand [and abund 
ant talent for making investigations^wiU' be 
able to solve some of the problems about pota¬ 
toes,which we common [farmers have not’ the 
time or means to solve. j. w . i. 
Sugar^Run, Pa. 
THE 
PLUME-LIKE GOLDEN JAPAN 
RETINISPORA. 
The specimen shown in the illustration, 
Fig. 327, was engraved from a photograph 
taken last April before the leaves of decidu¬ 
ous trees and shrubs had appeared. It was 
bought from the Parsons’ Nurseries, of Flush- 
ing, N. Y., about 12 years ago, and was then 
less than a foot in hight. It is now about 
10 feet high, and nearly as much in diameter 
near the base. It has thus far escaped all 
injury from heat, drought or cold, though 
we are advised it has not proven quite hardy 
iu Rochester, of this State. Its feathery 
plumes of foliage are rather weighty for the 
comparatively slender branches that support it. 
This tree, as well as the silver variegated va- 
riety, is liable to suffer during icy weather, 
or from an accumulation of snow, which 
causes the branches to spread apart, bend over 
and often to split or break. The specimen 
here illustrated shows on the right some 
injury caused by the “blizzard,” when for 
several days it was entirely covered by a 
snow bank. As soon as discovered, the bent- 
over branches were raised up, and supported 
by clothes lines tied around the tree, and in 
such a way as to be concealed by the foliage. 
It is at this time perfectly symmetrical. 
The new growth of this beautiful little tree 
is of a tender, peculiar tint of green, which 
later in the season, changes to a golden color, 
to be retained up to about February. After 
that, until the new growth begins, the color 
is dull and unattractive. 
GUERNSEY COW FLO WE Y SECOiND. 
^ At Fig. 328 we give an illustration of the 
Guernsey cow Flowey 2d, winner of the first 
prize at the recent show of the Bath and 
West of England Society at Newport, Eng 
land, and of the first prize and Lord ^Mayor’s 
Cup at the London Dairy Show, October 
1887. She was bred by Mr. G. Smith, got by 
Squire of Les Vauxvelets 69, from Flowey. 
At both these shows Flowey 2d was exhibited 
by Mr. A. Stanley Morris, Pear Tree House, 
Bitterne, to whom she belongs. She is an ex¬ 
cellent specimen of this fine dairy breed. 
A SEASONABLE HINT. 
T. D. CURTIS. 
her eggs, and that the tubers in that hill were 
perfectly , sound, while all the rest were badly 
affected with the rot. He says that since then 
he has repeatedly tried the experiment of 
covering some hills with newspapers, or straw, 
and that in every instance the hills so covered 
were sound, while most of those not so covered 
contained some rotten potatoes. From 
some cause unknown to me, good soil 
good seed, good cultivation and a tolerably 
good season will not always produce a good 
crop of potatoes. My garden was manured 
this spring, as it is every spring, with well 
rotted manure; part of it was planted with 
early potatoes, the seed being carefully se¬ 
lected. They were frequently hoed and kept 
free from weeds and bugs. I know the work 
has been well done, for I have done it all my¬ 
self. The tops are of good size and of medium 
hight, and are not dead yet, but the potatoes 
are ripe, the yield is poor, the tubers being 
small and but few in a hill. It would seem to 
be a favorable season when the tops keep 
green until digging time. Why are they not 
so good as usual ? 
Potato ground can be too rich for raising 
good potatoes. I once plowed up a part of an 
old barn-yard, and after getting the ground 
in good condition by harrowing, planted it 
with potatoes and cultivated them as Jong as 
a supply of the nutriment they needed, would 
have been poorer than the first. 
Mr. Terry raises his large crops of potatoes 
on clover sod. A clover sod is not so tough as 
a Timothy sod, rots more quickly and proba¬ 
bly contains more of the particular elements 
of fertility which potatoes require. I have 
seen potatoes raised by planting on top of a 
thick sod without any plowing or cultivation, 
merely covering the seed deeply with a blank¬ 
et of straw. There was a fair yield; they 
were easily dug—by merely removing the 
straw—and they were as clean as if they had 
been washed. Where did those potatoes get 
the food to make their growth? The roots 
did not penetrate the sod; straw is but a poor 
manure at best, when well rotted; but at dig¬ 
ging time this straw had not rotted much. It 
is as tiue now as it was in Shakespeare’s 
time, that “there are more things twixt 
heaven and earth than are dreamt of in our 
philosophy.” Some self-confident and self- 
reliant farmers may not be willing to admit 
it, but there are mysteries about potatoes, and 
perhaps about other plants, which cannot be 
accounted for by any knowledge which we 
now possess, and the discovery may possibly 
be made some time that the electric fluid, 
which pervades all things, and is constantly 
flowing in unknown and uncertain currents 
lhe old and new modes of feeding poor fod¬ 
der-, need of properly combining muscle 
and fat-forming foods ; when both kinds 
ate most needed ,; waste of carbonaceous 
food through lack of a due proportion of 
niti ogenous food ; the latter the more ex¬ 
pensive ; a bit of advice. 
The old-fashioned way was to begin .the 
first thing in the fall to feed the coarse fodder, 
and to continue feeding it as long as it lasted! 
This was considered the proper thing, because 
it got rid of lhe coarse stuff early in the win¬ 
ter, and generally before severe weather came 
on, aud left all the best feed for the colder 
weather, with a little choice rowen, perhaps, 
for the cows after coming in milk in the 
spiing. The real need of the cow’s system 
was not considered—indeed, was not under¬ 
stood—nor was there any better knowledge 
about the character of the food. Their desire 
was to get rid of the “roughage” first, with¬ 
out a thought as to whether it was economy 
to feed so much bulky and[carbonaceous food, 
lhe fact that the cow had been feeding on 
frosted grass and ripe, woody fiber, which 
contained principally carbon, a large portion 
of which was indigestible, was not considered 
a moment. The only thought was to use up 
,.he poorest first. 
