15. As potato balls contain on the average about one hundred seeds, twelve balls, allowing one-half the seed to grow, will yield six hundred plants-enough to start with, especially where more than one family are to be planted.

16. Balls when gathered are frequently quite hard, even when the stems were dead, or they fallen off; such should be kept until they soften a little, care being taken to mark the name or number of the sort, and to keep them in a dry place, otherwise they will mould.

17. Crush the balls under water in any small vessel, washing the pulp from the skins. Add water two or three times until all the free pulp is poured off; then place each sort in a glass tumbler or teacup, marked; pour in a little water, and add to it a little yeast, milk or molasses, any one of which will operate as a ferment. The object is to loosen the mucilage that adheres closely to the balls and prevents their drying well. In from two to four days the seeds will settle at the bottom clear, when the water may be poured off. The seeds should be spread around the side where very quickly they will dry, if standing in a free atmosphere.

18. Now put them up, first in pieces of thin tissue paper and around that any strong paper. The reason is that the crackling of coarse hard paper will often scatter half your seeds out in the act of putting them.up. Mark your papers legibly with name and date, and keep from the mice.

19. When seeds are gathered away from home, or in a hurry, they may be pressed from the balls over the surface of a bit of paper where they quickly will dry, and may be kept very safely. But this way is not neat, nor will it be found convenient at planting time.

20. Balls may be buried in the cellar, where they may be kept, often partially decaying, until spring. But this is not a neat way, although it has been recommended.

21. So also when balls are plentiful, and are permitted to fall on the ground and decay in the fleld, they will spring up spontaneously the next spring, as tomato seed would do in like circumstances, especially if the soil be rich and fine. When such plats are plowed and either sowed or planted with a spring crop, such potato seed will often spring up very thickly and may be cultivated by those who wish to do so, in connection with the crop regularly planted on the ground. Indeed, I have known such seed, that had been plowed in deeply, not to grow until brought near the surface of the soil when plowed the second year.

22. The vitality of freshly-saved seeds may always be readily ascertained. If under a microscope of small power they look bright, round and full, they are certainly good; or if, being cut open carefully with a penknife, the meat is white and hard, they are sure to be good. I have sometimes taken seed from soft and decayed balls. It was brown and needed no fermentation. It proved good.

23. I have used potato seed when three or four years old, and found it grow well. It may sometimes be advisable, in a year of abundant balls, to save much more than you will immediately want to use.

III. SAVING THE SEED AND CULTIVATING IT IN THE SEED BEDS. 24. Seed may be sown in the open field, as might be inferred from section 21, above. The evil there most commonly encountered is the ravages of a small fly which eats the leaves. In 1858, I sowed all my young crop of seedlings thus, and lost them all. I have often sowed a few hills in the field, covering each one with a pane of glass, but the method is expensive and troublesome. Besides, when thus sown, they start a little too late and do not mature in season always.

25. So seed may be sown in a hot-bed. The objection to this plan is that the bed is too hot, especially in the centre, where frequently the seed will not germinate at all. The potato is a mountain tropical, and requires much less heat than tomatoes, melons, &c. This is never more true than when the plants are young. Young potatoes will perish in a temperature where young tomatoes, melons, &c., grow rapidly.

26. A cold-bed (that is, a bed made with glass every way as for a hotbed, but with good garden soil merely, without hot manure under it,) is far preferable to a hot-bed. In such a bed, sow about the last week of April, or the first week of May. Sown at this time, the plants will become as large as is advisable by the time they are to be transplanted.

27. Your frame being prepared over a good spot of soil, in a place sheltered from high, cold winds, make the earth, (which should not be tenacious. and heavy) very fine. Draw short low furrows across your bed, very straight, eight inches apart and about one-half inch deep, making the extreme ends of each very accurately by small sticks set down.

28. Having soaked your seed about twelve hours, pour off the water. Add to it ten or fifteen times its quantity of fine well-sifted sand to give it body for sowing. Looking carefully to see that your furrows are free from small stones and lumps of earth, and are of very uniform depth, sow your seed. Having sown a few rows, perhaps all of one sort, draw your finger or a blunt hoe-handle carefully backwards and forwards to give the seed the utmost evenness in the furrow. Having previously prepared some fine rich earth, well-sifted, with a little fine coal ashes in it to give it a light color, sift it carefully by hand over the seed, about one-fourth of an inch. deep. Press it down upon the seed firmly, with a straight-edged rule or strip of board. These rules for sowing may seem too nice, but it should be remembered that potato seed is very small and germinates quite slowly. Sowed as here directed, you will know from the color of your soil just where to look for your plants when they come up, and you will be able to weed them with facility. Sowed carelessly you must waste much seed, and find your young plants with great difficulty. Be careful to mark the location of each sort in the bed, if you sow more than one.

29. Stretch along the head and foot of your bed a straight pole or narrow strip of board two inches wide. Now lay from one pole to the other strips of board immediately over the row of sown seed. This is for the purpose

of sheltering your seed from the hot sun until it is fully up. This in a cold bed is certainly not indispensable but will add greatly to the success of your germinating seed. Having thus covered your rows, water the whole so that the earth on the seed may be fully wet, and put on your glass.

30. Water from time to time as is needful. Protect your bed in severe weather as is usual. In very favorable circumstances your seed will show itself in ten days, but more commonly in fifteen.

While the tomato comes up with a long strap leaf, the potato has a short diamond shaped leaf with the point upwards.

31. After your seed is well up remove the shading strips of board that had been placed over the rows. It will be well, however, to be prepared to shade your bed in very hot days, by stretching narrow boards over the glass, even when the bed is much aired.

32. Weed thoroughly as early as the plants are well up and keep the soil soft and loose. As your plants gain size draw up a little earth on each side. When half an inch high, begin to thin them where standing too thick so that not more than three or four shall occupy an inch length of the row. As a rule pull out plants that have very dark stems and leaves especially. Such will usually have purple or red tubers which, other things being equal, are less popular than white varieties. Where the soil has been too heavy or has been neglected a little the young plants at the time of removal have shown tubers of the size of marrowfat peas. This result is occasioned by a check in their progress by which the energy of the plant was diverted from expansion of the leaf to an unnatural maturity and the formation of tubers. This result is hastened also by leaving the plants too thick. These small tubers never come to anything after the plant is set in the field. Do not take pains to save them. Gradually harden your plants as the time of removal draws nigh.

IV. CULTURE IN THE FIELD THE FIRST YEAR.

33. When your plants are about five or six inches high, (or about the 10th of June, in central New York,) is the proper time for transplantation, especially if they are to be set in an unsheltered position in the open field,

34. Choose a fair soil for potatoes, but have it a little fine. If the whole soil be not so prepare a spot for each hill with the hoe. If it be a part of your common potato field, as it had been plowed in the spring, it will now need to be worked afresh. Draw your furrows, as for your common crop, three feet apart. Set your plants two feet apart in the row, as thus set, with a good season, they will soon cover the whole ground. I like to make a deep furrow even though I have to fill it up again, in order to have plenty of loose soil under the plant. The reason is that, as your plants must be set much more superficially than tubers are ordinarily planted, they will not bear the weather well unless encouraged to root downward, nor will their young tubers bury themselves readily in the soil.

35. Set your plants as you would those of tomatoes or cabbage, choosing similar weather. I like to throw a handful of fine rich compost into each hill to be drawn over the roots of each plant. Thus the change from the richer soil of the seed bed to the poorer soil of the field will shock the plant less. I prefer having the plant stand a little below the common level, because, under the best treatment, the whole hill must be superficial the first year.

36. Beyond most transplanted vegetables potatoes need shading until they have well taken root, except in extraordinary weather. Leaves of burdock, pie-plant, &c., may be used, but by far do I prefer boards six inches wide and eight or ten long, such as can be made out of broad barrel staves, and especially old house sideing. They make the most perfect shade, are not easily removed by the wind, and will last many years. Let those that do not take root well, or are eaten off by worms, be superseded by fresh plants from the bed. Bear in mind that, as the potato is perennial, no plant should be permitted to live that does not start vigorously, since feeble plants cannot ensure a healthy race to descend from it.

37. Hoe carefully as soon as your plants are well established, softening the ground around the stem, but not shaking its roots, and drawing up a little earth. Hoe frequently until the side-sprouts begin to shoot up, and then cease, as you cannot otherwise avoid disturbing them.

38. Do not err by using very rich soil, and by protracted culture, to secure a large crop the first year. I have often had at the fall digging, single plants that produced four pounds of tubers. This is equal to a yield of more than three hundred bushels to the acre. The acre, when planted three feet by three feet, contains 4,840 hills, and four pounds to the hill will require but fifteen hills to the bushel. I prefer a smaller yield than this as more consistent with future hardiness.

39. I have sometimes set two plants in each hill, in the hope that thus crowding them they would be provoked into an easier maturity, but it has often happened, at digging time, especially where both happened to ripen at the same time, with tubers of the same color, that it was difficult to distinguish them.

40. Go through your plants frequently during the summer and root up every feeble and ill looking one. They will never suit you, and this mode will expedite the fall digging.

41. Other things being equal, the health of young seedlings is not so good the first, as in succeeding years. The reasons obviously are first, that the whole plant stands superficially in the soil, and hence it is more affected by heats, chills and sudden changes, than a more deeply rooted plant. The second reason is, that usually a crop of seedlings ripens a little later the first year, and so their final growth and maturity are finished amid cold, dark, and often wet weather, such as is often seen in late September and early October.

42. It is well, along the close of summer, to mark such hills as ripen early, as it will be an index to their future habits.

V. THE FIRST FALL DIGGING.

43. I have often begun digging with the first appearance of mature hills, and continued to dig weekly until all are ripe. Where this has not been the case, and digging has been deferred until all were ripe, or the frosts have killed the latest hills, you will dig all nearly at one time.

44. Begin with any one family, where you have more than one. Lay open the whole of them, if not too numerous. Then go over them hill by hill most deliberately, rejecting all of very bad shapes, deep eyes, or hollow hearts, all that are decidedly not ripe, that scatter badly in the hill, or that

are much diseased, especially if the weather has been good. It will be also well to reject all whose skins are dark, unless there be some very strong countervailing reasons, such as fine shape, fine flesh, great yield, &c. I usually also reject all whose flesh is much yellow. I advise these rejec tions because experience has settled the fact that, in future years, these evils will not grow less.

45. Do not usually save more than three tubers of a sort the first year, since these will produce more than you will know how to dispose of before you have finished their fourth or fifth year of test culture.

46. Wrap up each sort alone in a piece of paper doubled. Newspapers, or any waste paper will do. Tie up with a string, if you have no very secure place to store them, although by using a pretty large piece of paper I avoid this necessity. I advise this mode of storing as the cheapest and best after having tried many others.

47. Put each family in a box by itself, and mark the boxes. Do not store them so closely as to contract moisture. It is well to leave your separate parcels spread out a few days, until the skin of the tubers is well dried. In putting them into your cellar, guard against mice. It will be well to bore holes in your boxes with a large gimlet to promote a circulation of air, and prevent dampness.

48. If you began to dig early, and dug as they ripened, the date of maturity should be marked on the outside of each package with a red pencil. In this case, tie up all together that were dug on the same day.

49. It often becomes a question how many sorts you will save at the first digging. My rule has been, to save all that seemed to be hopeful in health, shape, &c. Even then the number will be found fearfully diminished by the close of the fourth or fifth year of test culture. This diminution is illustrated in the statements of sections 8, 9, and 10, above. In no department of agriculture have I ever endured half the disappointment that has been experienced with seedling potatoes. Very often a variety of the finest appearance, largest yield and apparently the best habits when dug the first year, has utterly disappointed me in succeeding years. Indeed the habits of many plants are not at all fixed in their birth, but are moulded like those of young animals in subsequent years.

50. Almost everything, however depends on the character of the base, or as we would say in regard to young animals, on the blood. With such bases as the Pale-Blush-Pink-Eye, Garnet Chili and Pink-Eye-Rusty-Coat, numerous good sorts may be hopefully anticipated from a family of four or five hundred seedlings. In other cases, all will have been rejected by a discriminating cultivator by the close of the fourth or fifth year.

VI. CULTURE THE SECOND YEAR.

51. Plant this year in the usual form of field culture, only being careful that each hill is well planted, having soft earth below, and the same upon the seed to the amount of three inches if the tubers are small, and five or six if they are the usual size, planting even pretty large tubers whole. I advise this particular care, because it being test culture, you need to know that if a hill does not prosper, the cause is not found in your carelessness,