AGRICULTURE AND ECONOMICS.
Art. XVII. On the Comparative Quantity of Nutritious Matter which may be obtained from an Acre of Land when cultivated with Potatoes or Wheat.
Art. XVII. On the Comparative Quantity of Nutritious Matter which may be obtained from an Acre of Land when cultivated with Potatoes or Wheat, by Dr. Eli Ives, Professor of Materia Medica and Botany in Yale College.
In a good season an acre of suitable land well cultivated will produce 400 bushels of potatoes. In Woodbridge, a town adjoining New-Haven, a crop of 600 bushels of potatoes has been obtained from a single acre. A bushel of potatoes weighs 56 pounds. Multiply 400, the number of bushels, by 56, the weight of a single bushel, gives 22400, the number of pounds of potatoes produced upon one acre.
Thirty bushels of wheat are considered a good crop as the product of one acre of land. About ⅚ of wheat may be considered as nutritious matter.
According to the experiments of Dr. Pearson and Einhoff, about one-third of the potato is nutritious matter. From the analysis of Einhoff, 7680 parts of potatoes afforded 1153 parts of starch—fibrous matter analogous to starch 540 parts—albumen 107 parts—mucilage 312 parts. The sum of these products amounts to about one-third of the potatoes subject to the experiment.
Sir Humphry Davy observes, that one-fourth of the weight of potatoes at least may be considered nutritious matter.