Page:Treatise on Cultivation of the Potato.djvu/24

 produce; which I have reason to believe he did, for its amount very nearly agreed with my calculation, upon viewing the growing crop about six weeks before it was collected. The situation in which this crop grew was high and cold, and the ground was not rich, but the part where the potatoes to be weighed were selected was perfectly dry, and afforded a much better crop than the remainder of the field; which was planted with several different varieties. I calculated the produce of the selected part to be 600 bushels per acre, and the report I received, and which I believe to have been perfectly accurate, stated it to be 628. If this produce be eaten by hogs, or cows, or sheep, for all are equally fond of potatoes, I entertain no doubt whatever that it will afford twenty times as much animal food as the same extent of the same ground would have yielded in permanent pasture; and I am perfectly satisfied, upon the evidence of facts which I have recently ascertained, that, if the whole of the manure afforded by the crops of potatoes above-mentioned be returned to the field, it will be capable of affording as good, and even a better, crop in the present year than it did in the last; and that as long a succession of at least equally good crops might be obtained as the cultivator might choose, and with benefit to the soil of the field. Should this conclusion prove correct, a very interesting question arises, viz.—whether the spade husbandry might not be introduced upon a few acres of ground surrounding, on all sides, the cottages of day-labourers, to and from every part of which the manure and the produce might be conveyed without the necessity of a horse being ever employed.

A single man might easily manage four statute acres thus situated, with the assistance of his family; and if nothing were taken away from the ground except animal food, I feel confident that the ground might be made to become gradually more and more productive, with great benefit to the possessor of the soil, and to the labouring classes, wherever the supply is found to exceed the demand for labour."

The fact that every variety of potato where it has been long propagated from parts of its tuberous roots becomes