Michigan Potatoes

The potato erop of Michigan íncreased fiom three million bushels in 1853 to five and a half million bushels in 1873, and is estimated to have reached about six million bushels last year, r very large portion of these being eaten within the State. Potatoes are now selling in the Detroit market at trom eighty to eighty-flve cents a bushei, or within a few cents as much as wheat. In very many families potatoes rank second to w heat as the staff of Ufe, and at present prices they cannot rank very far below it as a money erop. A very intelligent and successf ui farmer in Meeosta county assured us not long ago that he would rather warrant three hundred bushels of pototaes to tlie acre on hls farm than thirty bushels of wheat, and though this may be a somewhat exceptional case, it is still evident that potatoes fonn one of the most important parta of the farm products of Michigan. It is a little singular that a erop which costs so much hard labor and the t'ailure of which is so severely feit by all classes, should receive so little attention from leading agrieulturalists. In the last report of the State Board of Agriculture, a bulky volume of 732 pages, treating of all ni inner of farm, orchard and garden products, there are excellent essays on the cabbage worm, tne noney plant, the onion erop, the squash erop, and all the other crops not excepting the chicken erop, while the potato erop is only alluded to ineidentally. In all the programmes of papers and addresses before the recent Farmers' Institutes, we cannot now recall a single essayist who took as his theme, "The Cultivation of Potatoes." Had potatoes been ornitted from their bilis ot fare at the hotels, they would have commented upon the ommission severely, but in their bilis of literary fare, they seem to have regarded the subject as "small potatoes ' anyway. This oversight was no doubt accidental, though a Hibernian might certainly be pardoned for believing such an inexcusable and oft-repeated oyersight an intentional slight upon lis national tuber. It may not be owing to this lack of ittentlon on the part of amateur and essay-reading farmers, but tliere is certainiy a marked.deterioration in the Michigan potato the last few years, uoth in size and qunlity. In spite of ;he comparatively high prices now [)aid lor those in the Detroit inarket, a iarge proportioo of them are small, watery, immature roots, as destitute of nutrition or sweetness as a mouthful of putty. ïhere is really nothing in them or about them to retnind one of the Iarge, mealy, flnely tiavored and savory Peachblows and Early Roses we were accustomed to buy a few years ago. Is the potato degenerating, :r is Michigan soil becoming too exUausted to grow respectable potatoes ? One trouble, we believe, is the tact that farmers liave, during the last three or four years, used for seed the potatoes which had not fully matured in consequence of the vises ha ving been injured or destroyed by potato bugs. Such potatoes are not perfect, and it miri mi]y be in pursuance of a universal law or vegetauon, tiicb u-y should produce potatoes still less perfect themselves. In Osceola and sonie other counties in the central and northern part of the State, the potato bugs have not as a general thing, injured the late potatoes, and, in consequence, potatoes in that región last year were as Iarge, mature and mealy, as iiny we ever saw. We think farmers in other parta of the State where the erop was a partial failure, would find it profitable to renew their potatoes by sending to the northern