any use, scientific research must be rigidly accurate in its observation and merciless to fallacy in logic. Once a principle is proven it is of no use unless applied, and the man to apply it is the farmer.
At the present time it behooves us to divest ourselves of prejudice, whether of tradition or custom, which might tend to warp our judgment and treat as debatable assumptions which long-established association have made shameful to doubt, but which, undisturbed, would make the discovery of truth impossible. To-day theories are no longer revered because our fathers believed in them. The search-light of allprying Science illuminates the whole field of agriculture, and has led men to doubt and call in question even truth itself, in order that they might expose those things which are not true. It is by this means alone, by this attitude of questioning all statements and theories, both the truth and the untruth alike, that we can form a just estimate of what is true. That which cannot stand the fire may rightly be esteemed dross.
In this book the endeavor has been to collect many scattered facts from many sources, and present these— along with experience derived by growing potatoes for several years, commercially and experimentally, in two continents—in the hope that these data will be of value to the reader.
CORNELL UNIVERSITY,
Ithaca, N. Y., 1905
Note. With the exception of Figs. 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 43, and 44, which were kindly loaned by the makers of these implements, and those in which credit is given in the text, all illustrations have been prepared by the Author.