3. The seed balls of this year have, in many cases, been very large, in one case, the larger balls weighing one-half ounce each. 4. Fruit generally has been injured. Plums, on my sandy soil, have been a failing crop, though setting abundantly, and also protected from the curculio. They rotted when two-thirds grown, partly after and partly before the untimely fall of the leaf. The Elfrey, Damson, Prince's Imperial Gage, and the Yellow Gage, all did tolerably well, and in the order here indicated, but most other sorts failed almost entirely. My neighbors, who had plums on heavy clay soil, were much more successful. Grapes failed exactly as plums did.* Gooseberries and Peaches were both injured by a sun scald on the sun side of the fruit. Apples-Many varieties were spotted and dwarfed, worse than I ever knew the same sorts to be before. Others were not sound, and showed a disposition to rot, as I have never known the same sorts to do before. Walnuts, both shag-bark and black, were very poor, the meat being either shrivelled or bad in flavor.

5. Tropical plants were injured the first half of June by the coolness of the weather. During the long season of mildew they suffered, not however I think from that cause, but from profuse rain. The ripening fruit was injured in August by the general coolness of the weather.

6. From all the foregoing considerations combined, I conclude that the weather of 1851 was peculiarly unfavorable to the health of the potato, and would have been so had it occurred fifty years ago. The timely cool dry weather of August saved the crop from much rot, but as the vines were already dying, the crop has been light from the smallness of the tuber. The foliage of the crop in Oneida county was generally all dead by the middle of August.

7. In parts of our country where the season was dry and hot, or dry and cool, the preceding suffering of the potato crop was not of course felt, and will scarcely be appreciated.

No one who watched the progress and appearance of mildew on the wood and leaf of the grape can doubt that its cause was one with the potato discase. The unnatural hardness and the brown tinge of the berry of the grape, without and within corresponded exactly moreover with the similar appearance of the potato ball this year, and with that of diseased melons and tomatoes in former years.

APPENDIX TO ARTICLE ON POTATO DISEASE IN 1852. MISCELLANEOUS FACTS AND OBSERVATIONS.

1. Culture of Potatoes in the Southern states.-"In Mississippi and parts adjacent, the best common potatoes that we have ever seen were planted in November and December. Plow the ground deep, not less than ten inches-twenty would be better-open a deep furrow, and fill it with good stable manure, well trampled down; cover it slightly with earth and lay the tubers on ten or twelve inches apart; then cover with a heavy furrow turned up from each side and smoothed down with a hoe. Average the furrows so that the water will not stand, and you will have a good crop." American Agriculturist, Dec. 1847.

The noticeable points here are the earliness and depth of planting. These points have both been urged in the preceding essays. They give deep and wide spread space to the root, and thus secure the plant from drought, heat and sudden changes, while the crop is matured before the highest heats and drought of summer. The usage of the South is based on the implication that the potato requires cool and moist culture.

2. Culture of the Potato in cold and wet weather in France.-In the north-east part of France lies the district called Ban-de-laRoche. It was the residence of the celebrated Oberlin. In the life of that excellent man (Philadelphia edition, 1830, page 84,) we have the following record:

"By his extraordinary efforts and unabated exertions he averted from his parishioners in 1812, 1816 and 1817, the horrors of approaching famine. The new crop of potatoes that Oberlin had lately introduced, formed the principal subsistence of the people during those disastrous years when the season was so rainy and cold that they could not get in two thirds of the grain at all."

The single point which I wish to notice here, is the fact that in a cold and wet season, when grain could not be obtained for food, the potato was productive and became the chief reliance of the [Ag. Trans. 1852.]

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people. The climate of the north-east of France is much cooler than that of New-York and New England, and much less exposed to severe and sudden changes. Here is proof that the moist and cool soils, such as are usually found in mountainous districts, are congenial to the potato. The last two years, noticed above, will be well remembered as having been years of scarcity and suffering in our own country. During one of them, (1816, I think,) we suffered at least a slight frost in every month of the year. The potatoes were excellent, and the grass, though short, made very rich hay. Rye was sold at $2.00 per bushel, and other grain correspondingly high that year.

3. The potato not an acclimated plant.—The impression is wide spread that tender tropical plants can be gradually carried northward, and hardened to the climate until they will bear frost, and flourish there much as in their native clime. The whole impression is erroneous. Tropical plants may shorten the period of their maturity, and a few probably may be budded or grafted on hardy northern varieties that are nearly related, and thus a little strengthened. But this is the utmost that can be done. The fact that our summers are, while they last, nearly as hot as tropical ones, is the only reason why we can cultivate such plants as corn, cucumbers, melons, pumpkins, squashes, tomatoes, &c. But no one of these bears frost now, or matures good fruit in a short, cool, 'or wet season, any better than the first year they were introduced. Nay, some species of southern plants, when first introduced, possess a vigor which they afterwards lose.

My Bogota potatoes, imported in 1818, bear the high dry heats, the wet chills, the lacerating winds, the sudden changes of this climate, better than any of our old varieties. But they require a long season to mature their tubers, and four years of cultivation have done nothing, or at least little to shorten it. Nothing, I think, but reproduction from the seed ball will shorten them, or any plant similarly situated. One reproduction has already shortened the period of maturity in this variety, but not sufficiently. A second reproduction will, I hope, shorten them to the re

quirements of our climate. As the potato is a mountainous plant," cultivated over a wide extent of latitude, so it is possible among numerous importations, to find some whose period of maturity will be found exactly fitted to our own climate. So it has been in my experience.

4. The curled leaf.-This seems to be a constitutional defect that belongs mainly, if not exclusively in my experience, to the red varieties. The old red, one of our strongest and best old sorts, has it. My large family of home seedlings, derived from it, show it in some of the varieties, even where that variety is much stronger than the parent. So, also, two varieties of reds, sent me from abroad, exhibit it, although the seed was plump and fresh. I have not examined it farther than to notice that it comes on early in the season, and hopelessly dwarfs it, but does not disease the tubers.

5. The relation between bearing seed balls and the health and vigor of varieties.—The following thoughts are suggested with great diffidence, though strongly confirmed by the experience of past years. The general impression is that seed ball bearing is a test of hardiness among varieties of potatoes. I think the doctrine, in general is true, but it has many exceptions and qualifications. The capacity of a plant or tree to bear fruit seems often to depend not entirely on the general vigor of the plant or tree, but also upon the particular character of the flower, or of the season. The tree may possess most unquestionable vigor, while the flower may habitually be deficient, either in some indispensable organ, or in the vigor of that organ. Those acquainted with the controversy about pistilate and staminate strawberries will understand me. A wet, cold and windy season, at the time plants are in flower, frequently prevents their fructification. Some varieties of pears and plums, as well as of melons and cucumbers, frequently thus suffer. When once a plant or tree has established a character for regular fruit bearing, and subsequently, and almost habitually, fails to do so, there is undoubted evidence of depreciated energy. The following facts on this subject are clearly ascertained. in my experience, in regard to the potato:

(1.) All our old varieties, in these days of disease, drop their flowers without setting fruit. The exceptions are so few as not to be worth naming. The flowers frequently fall when in mere

bud, and long before they expand.

(2.) We formerly had a very good potato which bore no flower, and was called the "no-blow."

(3.) The Yam potato has exhibited, in the cultivation of 1851, a good degree of vigor, much more than any of the old sorts. Its numerous large white flowers exhibited a marked permanence, but not one of them set for fruit during the prevalence of mildew in the month of July. In August, under cooler and dryer weather they set and matured a moderate quantity of balls. Here I think the fault was in the character, (I will not say weakness) of the flower itself, or possibly the weather was too damp for fructification.

(4.) Some foreign sorts whose tubers were imported in an exhausted state last April, and became liable to mildew in July, set balls earlier than any others, and in amount beyond any thing I ever witnessed. They set them before the occurrence of mildew, while it continued, and after it passed away. The tubers, in this case were very small.

(5.) Other sorts, both home and foreign, set fruit moderately, both during and after mildew.

(6.) A variety of home seedlings, which I deem stronger than any other, bore but three balls on twenty-five hills, although the foliage had an unusually upright growth, with numerous flowers.

(7.) Another home seedling of the same family, and growing near the preceding, bore one quart of balls in twenty eight hills; and yet, whether you regard its foliage or tubers, its vigor was little above our old sorts, and by no means equal to that of the family to which it belonged.

(8.) The old kidney potato was one of the first to feel disease, yet it bears a little seed almost every year upon a few scattering hills found among my field crops. These facts are not easily harmonized with any theory; a variety of potatoes cannot reasonably be expected to bear a heavy crop of balls and tubers at the same time. Both balls and tubers are the result of elaboration in the foliage. The material thus elaborated, is derived from the air and earth; now,