Norwich bulletin., 1914-06-20
A ToPIEss POTATO HAnInG FROM KANSAS

nor time in applying it. But wonder if they grow without cultivation? If they have to be cultivated, how would fellow know where the rows were, so as to keep between them? Would a man have to plant. say sunfiowers, in the rows so as to show where the seed had been covered? Sunfowers are plenty in Kansas and 1 suppose they would grown in Connecticut. l seem to have seen a few in back gardens.
 But it certainly is requiring good deal to ask us doubting Thomases to believe that even a potato can live without breathing. I've been associat- ing with vegetables for a good many years, and I had come to suppose that one couldn't live without leaves, any more than cat can without lungs. In a rough way of stating it, the vegetable eats with it's roots and breathes with it's leaves. It abSorbs plant-food. l. e. nutriment. from that stored in the soil, and takes in other elements needed to turn the sap into fruitage from the air through it's leaves. Cut off a cats supply of food and it will die, in the course of time. no matter how much air it may have Cut off the same cat s air and it will die in about no time, no matter how full of cream it's saucer may be.
 have found the same thing to be true with plants. Take quack-Srass, for instance. If there's anything in the vegetable kingdom more tenacious of it's acquaintance. It's harder to kill than any cat I ever saw. If a cat has nine lives, quack-grass has about nine hundred. While it prefers rich soil fertilization, it will do very we'll thank you, on land too poor to raise beans. You can't starve it to death; you can't get all its roots out of the soil, unless you sift your farm, acre by acre, though a four sieve But you can kill it,-kill it dead as Julius Caesars dog, big enough to breathe with for three
 I know, because I have done it.
 The only vegetable l ever heard of that would grow underground without any leaves is the truffle. And that is a fungus, first cousin to the toad-stooi, and not amendable to the laws which govern honest above-ground plants. Moreover, you can't plant truffles. nor cultivate truffles, nor produce truffieS in any way They grow where they please and the only way to find them is to train dogs, as they do in England or pigs, as they do in France, to such fondness for them that the beasts will smell them out, a foot deep in a beech forest. and nose the way for you to dig after them. They are described as growing anywhere from the size of a plum to potato. But if you plant one it won't reproduce. Mushrooms have been made to yield spawn which will develop more mushrooms, but truffleS won't grow from anything except the Lords will and their own whims.
 Can it be that Kansas has been chosen as the home of a new vegetable mystery, which shall combine the se- cretive subterranean elusiveness of the truffle. with the domestic habits of the kitchen-ga potato?
 Or is somebody just drawing the long. bow 3}s5t4-n. to sec how many guilS he can hit? l give it up.
 One thing l have lived long enough to observe about many of these won- ders worked by self-styled wizards" They don't seem to supplant and take the places of the old stand-bys. There's s no doubt about the "seedless grape for instance. Yet, twenty years after it was developed. most of our seedless raisins are still made from fruit winch has had to have the seeds taken out from it. Nor is there any doubt about Baldwins and Greetings hasn't been spoiled They're still in demand. The "thornless blackberry was thornless in fact. That I can testify to. You could handle its vines as safely as those of currant bush. It was also berry less vine. in my garden, and about as useful as a row of alder bushes.
 
 Every once in while some vegetable freak manifests itself I once found a eorn-stalk with no ears on it, nut a veritable plume of a tassel which riyalled in gracefulness any pampas grass you ever saw. Pve had potatoes from on sprouts in a neglected cellar bin, white, smooth tubers, looking as good as could be but with no more taste than a hay sandwich. I once found a fve-leaved clover. And last year my horse plum tree. which I tol- crate because it makes @ood spring bee pasture, instead of producing plums. bore a quantity of membraneous bag like things,-something like small toy ba1lons.
 Every farmer finds these queer freaks among his growths. just as every year sees born somewhere, a fye-iegged calf or two-headed colt.
 As general thing, freak is freak, and that's all that can properly be said of it. As another general rule, the at tempt to get freaks to reproduce them selves is about as useful and profitable