own in a warm, dry, sandy, or gravelly
loam, well filled with decayed vegetable matters. The famous potato
lands of Lake County, Ohio, from which such vast quantities of potatoes
are shipped yearly, are yellow sand. This potato district is confined to
ridges running parallel with Lake Erie, which, according to geological
indications, have each at different periods defined its boundaries. This
sand owes much of its potato-growing qualities to the sedimentary
deposit of the lake and to manural properties furnished by the
decomposition of the shells of water-snails, shell-fish, etc., that
inhabited the waters.

New lands, or lands recently denuded of the forest, if sufficiently dry,
produce tubers of the most excellent quality. Grown on dry, new land,
the potato always cooks dry and mealy, and possesses an agreeable flavor
and aroma, not to be attained in older soils. In no argillaceous soil
can the potato be grown to perfection as regards quality. Large crops
on such soil may be obtained in favorable seasons, but the tubers are
invariably coarse-fleshed and ill-flavored. To produce roots of the best
quality, the ground must be dry, deep, and porous; and it should be
remembered that, to obtain very large crops, it is almost impossible to
get too much humus in the soil. Humus is usually added to arable land
either by plowing under green crops, such as clover, buckwheat, peas,
etc., or by drawing and working in muck obtained from swamps and low
places.

The muck should be drawn to the field in fall or winter, and exposed in
small heaps to the action of frost. In the following spring, sufficient
lime should be mixed with it to neutralize the acid, (which is found in
nearly all muck,) and the whole be spread evenly and worked into the
surface with harrow or cultivator.

Leaves from the woods, buckwheat straw, bean, pea, and hop vines, etc.,
plowed under long enough before planting to allow them time to rot, are
very beneficial. Sea-weed, when bountifully applied, and turned under
early in the fall, has no superior as a manure for the potato. No stable
or barn-yard manure should be applied to this crop. If such nitrogenous
manure must be used on the soil, it is better to apply it to some other
crop, to be followed the succeeding year by potatoes. The use of stable
manure predisposes the tubers to rot; detracts very much from the
desired flavor; besides, generally not more than one half as many
bushels can be grown per acre a