From James Torbitt [after 19 November 1879]1
Wall Heath Nr. Dudley.
November 19th 1879
Dear Sir,
I am much obliged to you for 16 seed potatoes weighing 2 lbs oz which reached here safely on the 17th April last & agreeably to your conditions in the ‘Field’ Newspaper on the 12th of that month beg to send you results.2
Immediately on their arrival I placed them to sprout in a moderately warm frame along with my bedding out plants but it was not until the 20th May when I thought they had grown sufficiently (about half an inch) that I cut them into 41 sets and planted them in some good rich soil dug two spits deep with only a small quantity of ordinary farm yard manure added
The crop was lifted on 28th October & found to weigh 20 lbs—the whole of the tubers with the exception of one about the size of a walnut being entirely free from disease*
I have caused a few to be boiled & found them very good cookers & eaters
A good many of them grew irregular in shape but I should think the produce was over the average in this District—this wretched season3
Truly yours. | Willm Meredith
James Torbitt Esqre. | 58 North Street | Belfast.
* very probably this is not the fungus—these small tubers being often otherwise diseased
Scattered all over the Kingdom, there are, perhaps a thousand growers like this, but it will require two or three years more for the varieties to attain sufficient bulk to be appreciated.
J.T.
Footnotes
Bibliography
Manley, Gordon. 1974. Central England temperatures: monthly means 1659 to 1973. Quarterly Journal of the Royal Meteorological Society 100: 389–405.
Summary
Encloses a report on JT’s potato varieties by William Meredith, one of the many individuals in the country who are growing them.
Letter details
- Letter no.
- DCP-LETT-12337
- From
- James Torbitt
- To
- Charles Robert Darwin
- Sent from
- unstated
- Source of text
- DAR 178: 158
- Physical description
- ALS 1p, encl ALS 2pp
Please cite as
Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12337,” accessed on 22 November 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12337.xml