I am quite well aware that such an outlay of labor and seed, with an entire loss of crop for one season, will seem to many too costly. I do not advise it except under peculiar circumstances; and yet I am confident that there are many fields that would be doubled in value by such treatment, which would richly repay all its cost. That most farmers could not afford thus to treat their entire farms at once, is very true; yet it does not follow that they might not deal with field after field thus thoroughly, living on the products of 40 or 50 acres, while they devoted five or six annually to the work of thorough renovation. A quarter of a century ago, we were threatened with a complete extinction of the Potato, as an article of food: the stalks, when approaching or just attaining maturity, were suddenly smitten with fatal disease--usually, after a warm rain followed by scalding sunshine--the growing tubers were speedily affected; they rotted in the ground, and they rotted nearly as badly if dug; and whole townships could hardly show a bushel of sound Potatoes. A desolating famine in Ireland, which swept away or drove into exile nearly two millions of her people, was the most striking and memorable result of this wide-spread disaster. For several succeeding seasons, the Potato was similarly, though not so extensively, affected; and the fears widely expressed that the day of its usefulness was over, seemed to have ample justification. Speaking generally, the Potato has never since been so hardy or prolific as it was half a century ago; it has gradually recovered, however, from its low estate, and, though the malady still lingers, and from time to time renews its ravages in different localities, the farmer now plants judiciously and on fit ground, with a reasonable hope that his labor will be duly rewarded. It seems to be generally agreed that clayey soils are not adapted to its growth; that, if the quantity of the crop be not stinted, its quality is pretty sure to be inferior; and I can personally testify that the planting of Potatoes on wet soil--that is, on swampy or spongy land which has not been thoroughly drained and sweetened--is a hopeless, thriftless labor--that the crop will seldom be worth the seed. As to the ten or a dozen different insects to which the Potato-rot has been attributed, I regard them all as consequences, not causes; attracted to prey on the plant by its sickly, weakly condition, and not really responsible for that condition. If any care for my reasons, let him refer to what I have said of the Wheat-plant and its insect enemies.[1] There has been much discussion as to the kind of seed to be planted; and I think the result has been a pretty general conviction that it is better to cut the tuber into pieces having two or three eyes each, than to plant it whole, since the whole Potato sends up a superfluity of stalks, with a like effect on the crop to that of putting six or eight kernels of corn in each hill.