To succeed the crops in pots and frames, a quantity should be started either singly in small pots or in boxes, and planted out in some warm sheltered spot about the middle of April. They may be 3 to 4 inches high when planted out, and till danger from frost be over, they will require protection by some means at night. These will keep up the supply till those planted in the usual way for general early crops are ready to use. I am not an advocate for springing main crops of early Potatoes to be planted in March more than half an inch, and even that without putting them into heat. It is easy to have them sufficiently sprung by selecting seed from the early crops of the previous year and keeping them in a dry airy store-room, where they start into growth far stronger.

Touching upon the general routine of Potato cultivation, it may be laid down as a rule necessary to first-class results that the soil should be an open deep loam, well drained, rather inclined to be sandy than otherwise, and that it should be trenched 2 feet deep, and well pulverised. The crop should be planted in ground that has been well manured for a previous crop, and no more manure added for the Potatoes. One half of the manuring in the field culture of the Potato is worse than useless. It is generally done in dry weather in April, when the manure gets dried before it is ridged in with the plough. In light dry soils I look upon the ridge system as very objectionable. The manure and sets are enclosed in a dry state in an elevated ridge, where the manure, once dry, is not easily wetted, and where in a dry season it can be of little use to the crop. Indeed, I have seen it turned out again in autumn almost as dry and entire as when it was covered up in spring, and under such circumstances it only served as a means of starving the Potatoes. If the crop were planted in the flat - as in garden culture - on light dry soils, instead of in ridges, it would give heavier crops.

The manure would then be far more likely to serve its end, but more likely still if it were well incorporated with the soil the previous autumn.

In gardens, particularly where the soil is usually richer than is good for the Potato, wide planting is desirable. Earlies should be allowed 2 feet 10 inches, and later sorts 3 feet, between the rows, and 15 inches between the sets for late strong-growing sorts. By planting them wide the tops get plenty of room, and the crop is much heavier and sounder, and there are fewer small and unsaleable tubers. In working and cleaning the ground while the crop is growing, the loosening, by forking or grubbing, should be done soon after they are above the ground, and not deferred till immediately before moulding up. The system of grubbing up close to the stems of the Potatoes after they are 1 foot high tears up the stringy roots on which the young tubers are formed, and does a vast amount of harm. In gardens where there is not so much of a breezy circulation of air, the absence of which, with a rich soil, produces a rank and more watery growth, the crop should be carefully looked over when 2 or 3 inches above ground; and whenever more than two stems have come up from one set, they should be pulled away.

Seed should be always saved for the earliest crops from the corresponding crop of the previous season; and were the seed Potatoes selected at the time the crops are taken up, and carefully stored by themselves in dry airy places in thin layers, instead of being pitted in great bulk along with the Potatoes, either for use or sale, we should hear less of weak blanky brakes and fields of Potatoes. For early crops of the kidney varieties, the very largest sets should be chosen for seed. There is no greater mistake in Potato culture than that of selecting small sets or cutting large ones. I have proved this over and over again, and any one can put the matter to the test by planting a quarter of a field of Potatoes, beginning at one side of the quarter, and planting a row or rows of very small sets, and then a row a size larger, and so increasing in size till the largest is planted. It will be found at harvest that the small sets give the poorest crop, and the largest proportion of small unsaleable tubers; and the yield of the whole will just be, in this respect, in proportion to the size of the sets. The cutting of sets is not at all necessary for garden culture at all events, nor attended with much, if any, profit under any circumstances, and it is attended with great evils.

The tuber that is cut loses much of the sap, which it is of great importance to retain; and, in dry seasons especially, cut sets are more likely to perish from what is termed dry-rot. The bleeding set is frequently encased among dry manure, and in a dry ridge of soil; and unless a soaking of rain wards off the evil, blanky fields are the certain result. The sap is sucked from the Potato by the dry surroundings, and it never comes away. To cut Potatoes for seed after they have been allowed to grow 4 to 6 inches in pits, as is often the case, cannot but be regarded as the most irrational practice possible.

The varieties of Potatoes now grown and offered for sale, some under two or three local names, are very numerous; yet the sorts which may be regarded as sufficient to supply a family till the field-crops are ready need not be numerous. The True Ash-leaved is probably yet the best for early crops. Though some sorts are a little earlier, I have never tried any combining so many good qualities so early. As a second early Kidney, Mayatt's Early is very good, and so is Mona's Pride. To succeed the two latter, the Lapstone Kidney stands unrivalled for fine quality, and is a good cropper. Among early round varieties the Bloomer, alias Curl Top, alias Coldstream Early, is a very good and early round Potato; but round Potatoes are not admissible in first-class dining-rooms while Kidneys can be had. Daintree's Early, American Early, and Dalmahoy, form good successions in the order named, and are all excellent croppers, and good in quality. A variety known in some localities as Rosse's Early, but which scarcely deserves being called early, for it is not ready till August, is a great favourite of mine. It is an enormous cropper, and splendid in quality.

At Archer-field I grew this variety from the largest sets I could select, planted whole, 3 feet by 1 foot 6 in., a few rows annually to produce large tubers, to bake with their jackets on, and serving up whole. One season I produced one tuber weighing 3| lb., and out of a few barrowfuls off the same small piece of ground I picked out forty-eight tubers which weighed 44 lb. - -some considerably over 2 lb. and some less; and every Potato was solid to the core, and there was scarcely a Potato amongst them that could be termed small - a result brought about by a succession of years, wide planting, and large sets. D. T.