New York AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION. 101 
it is not generally considered a good practice to plant whole 
small tubers. 
Another objection is the small scale upon which the experi- 
ment was made. Each series had an area of one-tenth acre and 
each row one-fiftieth acre. There is every reason to believe that 
the yields were actually as large as stated. The product of each 
row was accurately weighed to an ounce and the land accurately 
measured. But it must be admitted that so small an area has 
advantages over large ones. In the first place, almost every 
large field has a certain amount of poor or waste land which cuts 
down the average yield; whereas, a small field can be so located 
that there will be no waste land. Secondly, with a small field it 
is possible to plant, spray, cultivate, etc., always at the proper 
time, which is not possible for large fields. 
The spraying was done more thoroughly than most farmers 
would do it, and since the success of spraying depends largely 
upon the thoroughness with which it is done, it is likely that the 
benefits from spraying in the experiment were greater than they 
would be from spraying done by the average farmer. However, 
the thoroughness of spraying was partially offset by the fact that 
the diseased foliage of unsprayed rows often intermingled with 
the foliage of sprayed rows, subjecting them to greater danger 
of infection than would be the case where a whole field is sprayed. 
Also, the alternation of sprayed with unsprayed rows made the 
progress of the disease less rapid among the unsprayed plants 
than it would have been in unspraved fields, where the disease 
could pass from one plant to another across rows as well as 
lengthwise of them. In the experiment infection among the 
unsprayed plants must have ‘spread chiefly lengthwise the rows. 
No matter in what way a large yield is brought about, whether 
by the use of large quantities of fertilizer, by thick planting, extra 
cultivation or the use of productive varieties, the benefits from 
spraying will be correspondingly increased. That is to say, a 
field of potatoes which without spraying would yield but 100 
bushels per acre, would not give as large returns for spraying as 
would a field capable of producing 200 bushels per acre without 
spraying. In the Geneva experiment, with potatoes which 
yielded 219 bushels per acre without spraying, three sprayings 
