50 
THE CULTIVATOR. 
Feb'o 
Indian ponies; some from the wild herds of the prai¬ 
ries; some from the Messenger and Duroc families, 
and some from three-quarters, and seven-eighths, and 
even fully bred stallions. Still, they are not altogether 
chance productions. Some families are uniformly good 
trotters: and I think the true way of improving the 
trotting horse of our country, is to select the hardiest, 
fleetest mares of these families and send them to tho¬ 
rough-bred stallions. This will give the bottom so 
much needed. In a match of two or four miles a horse 
of bottom has greatly the advantage, over even a much 
fleeter competitor, that lacks it. The former keeps 
steadily on his gait, rather increasing his speed as he 
goes; the latter “ breaks up on the back stretch,” and 
continues to break at intervals, until his better winded 
competitor 11 mends the gap ” and wins the heat. I 
have no doubt that high breeding, will in a few years, 
be considered as necessary for the trotter as for the 
runner. But my article is again too long. In my 
next I wull notice the Norman and Morgan horses. 
Respectfully, &c. ; J. B. B. 
Syracuse, Jan. 22, 1848. 
CULTURE OF THE POT1TOE. 
Editors of the Cultivator —There have been a 
thousand and one attempts to explain the cause or 
causes of the potato rot, and as many remedies sug¬ 
gested, most of which, in whole or in part, appear to 
be unsatisfactory. 
I am not about to theorise upon this subject, but 
shall simply deal in matters of fact, as they occur 
under my management of this crop on my soil, leav¬ 
ing the reader to judge for himself whether the same 
management would be attended with like success with 
him. 
There is one system of management by which I have 
thus far never failed of raising fine, mealy and sound 
potatoes, that keep well the season round. I select a 
piece of green sward land, of sandy or gravelly soil, 
that has never been subjected to a course of manuring 
and cropping; (a piece of pasture land is best, and if 
it never bore a crop of potatoes it is still better;) and 
plant it as early as possible to potatoes one year, with¬ 
out manure. A table spoonful of plaster, or a hand¬ 
ful of unleached ashes, or a mixture of both, put into 
the hill at planting time, will well repay the expense. 
It imparts considerable vigor to the growth of the 
crop in the fore part of the season, and also increases 
the yield somewhat. It will be observed that I do not 
prescribe this application in the shape of a nostrum, to 
prevent the rot, for it is my impression that applied or 
not applied, is all the same as to the soundness of the 
crop. 
In digging them in the fall, I am careful to dig when 
the land is tolerablydry, and there is a prospect of fair 
sunshine. They are dug out of the ground in the fore¬ 
noon, and lay scattered about to dry in the sun till two 
or three o’clock in the afternoon, so that no moist dirt 
shall adhere to them, for I find that potatoes put into 
the cellar in a damp state, are much more likely to rot 
than those which are put in dry. I also delay digging 
them as long as possible, but by no means so long as 
to encounter a hard freeze by which the potatoes are 
affected, for in that case they will surely rot. The 
bottom of my potato-bin is made of plank, raised up 
the thickness of slit work from the bottom of the cellar, 
and the sides of narrow pieces of boards, not quite 
tight together, which admits of a circulation of air on 
all sides. The bin should not be more than three or 
four feet wide for the same reason. Potatoes keep best 
in my cellar not to touch the bottom or the walls on the 
side, as dampness is imparted to them from both these 
causes. For this reason the back side and ends of the 
bin should be of boards as well as the front and bottom. 
Every clear, cool morning, until the freezing weather 
of winter sets in, the cellar doors are opened two or 
three hours for ventilation. A thing which should al¬ 
ways be practiced where a considerable quantity of 
vegetables are stored away. 
It is true that potatoes will not yield 4, 5, or 600 
bushels to the acre, on land of moderate fertility, with¬ 
out manure; but I get 150 to 200 bushels of excellent 
quality, and by using care in gathering and storing 
them, they keep well through the season. 
The first year that the potato rot made its appear¬ 
ance in this section, I planted three rows wide of pota¬ 
toes around a cornfield of eight acres, for the purpose 
of turning the horse more conveniently in working 
among the corn. The field was a little broken in sur¬ 
face, and embraced several qualities of loam, some 
rather coarse gravelly spots, some more sandy, and 
some, through the hollows, rather compact and fine¬ 
grained. I had the curiosity to mark the result upon 
these three rows of potatoes through the season. The 
vines blasted and died off early in the season, where 
the rows encountered the compact and moist soil in the 
hollows, while those on the gravelly and sandy spots 
held green and thrifty, and in harvesting were found to 
yield more in quantity and better in quality, than in the 
hollows, and more fertile parts of the field. The re¬ 
sult was entirely at variance with all my former expe¬ 
rience in growing this crop. I had previously always 
selected such kind of soils as these rich and moist, but 
not wet, hollows, obtaining from them a large yield and 
good quality of potatoes. 
Last spring I planted two bushels of my table pota¬ 
toes in the kitchen garden, which had been heavily ma¬ 
nured, partly by way of experiment, and partly be¬ 
cause I had no particular use for the land. In digging 
them this fall I found, as I expected, not one quarter of 
them sound, while seed potatoes taken from the same 
bin, and planted on a piece of pasture land, without 
manure, where my main crop grew, gave me a return 
of perfectly sound potatoes. I leave your readers to 
draw their own conclusions, whether or not these two 
cases which I have given, go to substantiate the method 
of growing this crop which I have recommended. 
F. Holbrook. 
Brattleboro . Nov. 25, 1847. 
Transmutation of Wheat.- —The Ohio Cultivator 
says that a correspondent, who does not complain of 
his wheat turning to chess, says that it has been turn¬ 
ing to timothy; and what is still more unaccountable, 
he has had much difficulty in preventing his corn and 
'potatoes from turning to weeds. A writer in the same 
paper says when the growth of the wheat is good, the 
chess is stunted, small, and escapes notice; but when 
the wheat is killed, it stands out far and wide, and that 
he has counted 78 stalks of chess from one seed, show¬ 
ing an increase of 3560 fold. 
Brilliant Toast. —Among the toasts at the cele¬ 
bration of the Middlesex (Mass.) Agricultural Society, 
was the following: u The mighty powers of mud.”—~ 
11 Some men profanely swear by it; we farmers more 
piously prefer to thrive by it.” 
