264. QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. [1 Ocr., 1898, 
was 1613 bushels per acre. Result of experiment shows that kainit alone 
increased the product 40 per cent., and application of 800 lb. kainit and 400 lb. 
superphosphate per acre fetched up to 115 per cent.”—D. D. Zohmor, West 
Virginia Experiment Station, 1892, Bulletin No. 20. 
These details speak for themselves. The fertiliser for potato Jand is 
pre-eminently potash in one or other of its commercial forms, and, by its use, 
the injury and pauperising of the soil by continuous year-after-year cropping 
without a rotation change, as is so often done at the Cape [of Good Hope], is 
capable of remedy. 
It may not be of very much importance as things stand at present, but, as 
a counsel of perfection, it will be found that sulphate of potash, though more 
expensive than chloride salt, is preferable if the higher cost can be borne. 
One has to reckon with the disadvantageous effect of the chloride element 
in the other case; and it seems generally allowed that soft, watery potatoes 
are often produced by the action of the potassium chloride upon the starch- 
content of the cells of the tuber, while this does not seem to be the ease with 
* potassium sulphate. 
The following is an average potato fertiliser* on these lines :— 
Potassium sulphate (grade of 27 per cent. potash) ... 200 lb. 
Superphosphate (12 per cent.)... oon pe0 ..- 800 lb. 
Sodium nitrate ... on ne on cies ..- 150 lb. 
The above we have taken from the Agricultural Journal of the Cape of 
Good Hope, as it appears to us that the experiments here recorded and their 
results should prove of infinite value to farmers. No man can be styled a 
perfect farmer who does not thoroughly understand potato culture. Anyone can 
plant potatoes, but to obtain heavy crops of the most marketable varieties it is 
necessary not only to plant properly, but to cultivate thoroughly and prepare 
the ground on scientific principles. 
We remember a case on the Logan River many years ago, where a farmer, 
who posed as an authority on all farming matters, put in a tew acres of 
potatoes. Some weeks after planting, he visited a neighbour whose potato 
crop was making a grand show. His own crop was coming up straggly, and 
half of them had not shown at all. His neighbour asked him if his seed was 
shooting when he planted them. ‘Oh, no,” he said; “ but that does not 
matter, they will shoot in the ground as well as in the barn.” But the ground 
was a mass of weeds before the potatoes appeared at all. This man did not 
understand the first principles of potato-growing ; the result was that he had 
to plough up the land, and so lost the whole of his seed, which in those days 
ran up sometimes to £12 per ton. 
COTTON-SEED—ITS PRODUCTION AND USES. 
Ag the Millwall Docks in London one can frequently see steamers discharging 
into barges small, black, downy seeds, resembling tiny pebbles that have 
received a slight sprinkling of snow. On inquiry one finds that the steamers 
are unloading cotton-seed from Egypt, the slight coating of white which 
adheres to the seed being cotton-lint. From the ship’s hold the cargo is dis- 
charged by buckets into hoppers, from which projects a succession of spouts. 
The seed is weighed on scales fitted inside the hoppers, and is then shot, by 
the pulling of levers, through the spouts into the barges. If the latter are 
followed to their destination it will be found that they are bound for oilseed 
mills, where the seed is received. From the mills it reappears, but in other 
forms. What went into the mills as cotton-seed comes out as cake and oil. 
“A cost of £2 18s. per acre.—Ed. Q.4.J. 
