



eee eee 
195 
shallow drills, twelve feet long and three and a half feet apart, and 
two drills were planted with each name. Thus there were twenty- 
two hills of each name, with a few exceptions. 
In forty-five of the varieties, the cuttings planted in the first row 
were taken from a very large tuber, and those planted in the second 
row, from one or more tubers just large enough to be merchantable. 
As will appear, we give the yields of these tubers separately. 
The soil was heavily manured in November, 1884, with well rot- 
ted barn-yard manure, which was plowed inas soon as applied. As 
we did not desire to raise the manure to the surface in the spring, 
we did not plow the ground before planting, but simply cultivated 
the surface. i 
No weeds were permitted to grow among the plants, and when 
these were about half grown, the hills were ridged to a moderate 
height. After the tops were dead, the crop was harvested. 
In the following table, the yields are given, calculated on the basis 
of one hundred hills. That is to say, the large tuber of the Adiron- 
dack, of which eleven eyes were planted, would have yielded 205 
pounds of tubers, had there been 100 eyes, yielding at the rate that 
the eleven eyes yielded. We adopt this method of expressing yields 
for several reasons. One or more of the eyes planted often fails to 
vegetate. Sometimes a single tuber is sent in for trial, of which 
there are not eyes enough for a whole row. In order to make all 
comparable, therefore, we must reduce them to one standard. Itis 
very desirable, also, to be able to compare the yields as given in the 
reports of different years, which would be difficult were they not all 
calculated on the basis of a given number of hills. We have, there- 
fore, followed this method in all of our reports of the yields of dif- 
ferent varieties of the potato. 
As will appear from the table, potatoes rotted badly at the station 
the past season, some varieties beinga total loss. We give, by nwm- 
ber, the per cent. of tubers more or less decayed of each variety, 
calculated at the time of digging on the entire yield; that is, on both 
the merchantable and unmerchantable tubers. 
Lubers of merchantable size that grew much mis-shapen are des- 
ignated ‘‘ malformed,” and the number of such is also expressed in 
per cent. 
