The research workers into applied agricultural science, in which Leeds
University has taken a prominent place, have been demonstrating a small scientific fact that is of interest to every countryman who has a patch of vegetable garden. It is a common custom to cut potato sets, but not all who do this understand the nature of what Gilbert, with a certain prophetic sense, called " the bashful young potato." In a pretty experi- ment, made many years ago, you could detect by electrical agitation the effort of a pricked potato to heal a wound inflicted by a needle. Some newspaper critic at the time said you could hear it scream. However that may be, a cut potato can bandage its own wound most effectively ; but only in the right conditions. If it is cut in the sunlight and the dry the wound is likely to prove mortal. If cut in moist and comparatively darkened air it will suffer little pain, and in due time produce a hundredfold. In a particular trial the difference of yield was as l8 tons to 74 tons from tubers cut in the better and worse conditions. * * * *
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