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spring, and which, nevertheless, acquire perfect or rather early maturity in autumn, and there are probably climates in which such varieties would be peculiarly valuable; and the ductility and obedience of this species of plant to human will is so great, that I doubt whether, by the Creation and selection of proper varieties, as abundant a produce might not be obtained within the limits of the frigid zone as in the torrid zone, of which the potato is a native. The weather in some parts of the coast of Norway, within the limits of the frigid zone, is very warm and bright during a period, which I believe to be quite long enough to ripen any early variety of the potato perfectly.
It is my wish to send in the spring one or two potatoes of each of the varieties which I think likely to prove valuable; and I shall be happy subsequently to send a quantity of any which may be approved.
In raising varieties of the potato from seeds it is always expedient to use artifical heat. I have trained up a young seedling plant in a somewhat shaded situation in the stove till it has been between four and five feet high, and then removed it to the open ground in the beginning of May, covering its stem during almost its whole length lightly with mould, and by such means I have obtained within the first year nearly a peck of potatoes from a single plant. But I usually sow the seeds in a hotbed early in March, and, after having given them one transplantation in the hotbed, I have gradually exposed them to the open air, and planted them out in the middle of May: and, by immersing their stems rather deeply into the ground, I have within the same season usually seen each variety in such a state of maturity as has enabled me to judge, with a good deal of accuracy, respecting its future merits.
I stated, in a former communication two years ago, that I had obtained from a small plantation of the early ash-leaved kidney potato a produce equivalent to that of 665 bushels, of 80 pounds each, per acre; and my crop of that variety in the present year was to a small extent greater. By a mistake of my workmen I was prevented ascertaining with accuracy the produce per acre of a plantation of Lankman's potato; but one of my friends having made a plantation of that variety precisely in conformity with the instructions given in my former communication to this society, I requested that he would send me an accurate account of the
