ing cattle, and sometimes milk cows. A grass field contiguous to the turnip one is always very desirable, that the sheep confined on other sides by hurdles or nets, may always find a dry place to lie on.

4898. In the expenditure of turnips to young cattle, and to sheep in their first year towards spring, when the loosening and shedding of their teeth render them unable to break the large roots, it is usual to cut or slice the turnips, either by means of a spade, or chopping knife, or by an implement constructed for the purpose, called a turnipslicer, formerly mentioned (2456.); or they are crushed by means of a heavy wooden mallet.

4899. During severe frosts, turnips become so hard that no animal is able to bite them. The best remedy in this case is, to lay them for some time in running water, which effectually thaws them; or, in close feeding houses, the turnips intended for next day's use, may be stored up over night, in one end of the building, and the warmth of the animals will thaw them sufficiently before morning. But in those months when frosts are usually most severe, it is advisable to have always a few days' consumption in the turnip barn. When a severe frost continues long, or if the ground be covered deep with snow, potatoes ought to be employed as a substitute.

4900. The advantages of eating turnips on the place of their growth by sheep, both in manuring and consolidating the ground, are sufficiently well known to every farmer. One great defect of the inferior sort of turnip soil is the want of tenacity; and it is found that valuable crops of wheat may be obtained upon very light porous soils, after turnips so consumed. It is not uncommon to let turnips at an agreed price, or board, for each sheep or beast weekly. This varies according to age and size, and the state of the demand, from four-pence or less, to eight-pence or more for each sheep weekly, and from two shillings to five for each beast. An acre of good turnips, say thirty tons, with straw, will fatten an ox of sixty stone, or ten Leicester sheep. Supposing the turnips worth six guineas, this may bring the weekly keep of the ox to six shillings and three-pence halfpenny, and of the sheep to about seven-pence halfpenny a week. In this way of letting, however, disputes may arise, as the taker may not be careful to have them eaten up clean. The person who lets the turnips has to maintain a herd for the taker; and when let for cattle, and consequently to be carried off, the taker finds a man and horse, and the latter maintaining both. The taker has to provide hurdles or nets for fencing the allotments to sheep; but the latter must fence his own hedges if necessary. The period at which the taker is to consume the whole is usually fixed in the agreement, that the seller may be enabled to plough and sow his land in proper season. (Suppl. to Encyc. Brit. art. Agr.)

4901. The Swedish and yellow turnip are eaten greedily by horses; and afford a very nutritive and salutary food along with hay or straw for working stock. The best mode is to steam them after previously passing them through the slicing machine, as no root requires so much cooking as the Swedish turnip. Horses will also eat the white turnip, but not freely, unless they have been early accustomed to them, as in some parts of Norfolk.

4902. Near large towns the most profitable mode of disposing of turnips, is to the cow-keepers and green-grocers.

4903. The application of turnips in domestic economy is well known. They may also be used in the distillery, and a wine is said to be made from them by the London manufacturers of imitations of foreign wine.

4904. The storing of turnips is attended with too much labor and risk, to be of much advantage in the greater part of the kingdom. Common turnips are never stored in any great quantity, though sometimes a portion is drawn and formed into heaps, like potatoe camps, and lightly covered with straw, or preserved for some time under a shed. On these occasions, the shaws or leaves, and the tap-roots, must be cut off and removed before storing up, to prevent heating and rotting. The heaps must not be covered with earth like potatoes, for in this case their complete destruction is inevitable. This root contains too much water to be preserved for any length of time in a fresh and palatable state, after being removed from the ground; and though the loss in seasons unusually severe, particularly in the white globe variety, is commonly very great, it is probable that a regular system of storing the whole, or the greater part of the crop every season, would, upon an average of years, be attended with still greater loss; besides the labor and expense, where turnips are cultivated extensively, would be intolerable. (Supp. &c.)

4905. Taking up and replacing is a mode by which turnips have been preserved, by Blaikie, of Holkham, and some others. The mode is to cart the turnips from the field where they grow, to a piece of ground near the farm-offices before the winter rains set in, when the tap-root being cut off, the plants are set on the surface of the ground, in an upright position, as close to each other as they can stand, where they keep much better than in a store, during the whole season. And the advantages of having them quite close to the homestead, in place of bringing them most probably from a distant part of the farm in

wet or stormy weather, are so obvious, as fully to justify a recommendation of the practice.

4906. Replacing and earthing have also been tried with success, especially with the Swedish turnip. Being pulled and freed from their roots and leaves, they are carted to a piece of well worked dry soil near the farmery, and there deposited in rows, so close as nearly to touch each other in the bottom of shallow furrows, the plough covering one row as another furrow is opened. In this way many tons are quickly earthed in, and on a very small space, and they can be turned out when wanted with equal facility. (Farmer's Magazine, vol. xxiii. p. 282.)

4907. The produce of turnips cultivated in the broad-cast manner in England, varies from five to fifteen tons per acre: the latter is reckoned a very heavy crop. In Northumberland and Berwickshire, a good crop of white globe turnips drilled usually weighs from twenty-five to thirty tons per acre, the yellow and Swedish commonly a few tons less. Of late there have been instances of much heavier crops, and in Ayrshire, it would appear, that above sixty tons have been raised on an English acre, the leaves not included. (Farmer's Magazine, vol. xv. and xvi.) But such an extraordinary produce must have been obtained by the application of more manure than can be provided, without injustice to other crops, from the home resources of a farm; and where turnips form a regular crop in the rotation, no such produce is to be expected under any mode of culture.

4908. The produce of the turnip in nutritive matter, as proved by Sir H. Davy, was forty-two parts in a thousand; of which seven were mucilage, thirty-four sugar, and one gluten. Swedish turnips afforded sixty four-parts in a thousand of nutritive matter, of which nine were starch, fifty-one sugar, two gluten, and two extract. According to Von Thaer, 100 lbs. of turnips are equal to twenty-two of hay; and an ox to get fat on turnips ought to have one-third of its weight daily.

4909. To raise turnip seed, the usual mode is to select the most approved specimens of the variety to be raised at the season when they are full grown, and either remove all others from the field and leave them to shoot into flower stems next year, or to transplant them to a place by themselves where they will be secure from the farina of other plants of their genus. In either case they must be protected by earthing up from the winter's frost and rains, and in the ripening season from the birds.

4910. The Norfolk seed growers have a sort of theory on the subject of transplanting turnips for seed which it may be worth while to attend to. According to that theory where turnip seed is collected from such turnips as have been sown three or four years in succession, the roots are liable to be numerous and long, and the necks or parts between the bulbs and leaves coarse and thick: and when taken from such as have been transplanted every year, these parts are liable to become too fine, and the tap-roots to be dimi nished in too great a proportion. Of course the most certain plan is to procure seed from turnips that are transplanted one year and sown the next; or, if they be transplanted once in three years, it is supposed, that the stock may be preserved in a proper state of perfection. It is stated, that the method of performing this business in the best way, is to select such turnips as are of the best kinds and of the most perfect forms, from the field crops, and, after cutting their tops off, to transplant them, about the month of November, or following month, into a piece of ground that has been put into a fine state of tillage by repeated ploughing or digging over, and which should be situated as near the house as it can be, in order that the birds may be better kept from it. The seed will mostly be ready for gathering in the end of July, or in the following month.

4911. Other cultivators, however, advise that the seed collected from a few turnips thus transplanted, should be preserved and sown in drills, in order to raise plants for seed for the general crop, drawing out all such as are weak and improper, leaving only those that are strong and which take the lead; and that when these have formed bulbs, to again take out such as do not appear good and perfect, as by this means turnip seed may be procured, not only of a more vigorous nature, but which is capable of vegetating with less moisture, and which produces stronger and more hardy plants. The practice of transplant. ing the whole of the turnips for seed for the main crops being contended to be not only highly expensive, but injurious, by diminishing the strength of the plants from the destruction of their tap-roots. Very good seed may, however, be raised in either of the methods that have been here described.

4912. After the seed has become fully ripened, it is mostly reaped by cutting off part of the stems, and afterwards tying them up into sheaves, which, when sufficiently dry, are put into long stacks, and kept through the winter, in order to be threshed out about the time when it is wanted. But as in this way much seed is liable to be lost, by its readiness to escape from the pods in which it is contained, it is advised as a much better practice to have it immediately threshed out, either upon a cloth in the field where it grew, or in some other convenient place, being then put into bags proper for the purpose and placed in a situation which is perfectly dry. From seed crops of this sort being subject to much injury and loss in different ways, the quantity of produce must be very different under different circumstances; but it may in general be stated at not less than from twenty to twenty-four bushels the acre. And the price of turnip seed being seldom less than seven or eight shillings the bushel, on account of the great demand for it, it may at first appear to be a very advantageous sort of culture; but from the exhausting nature of the crop, the loss sustained in grain, and the quantity of manure afterwards necessary, it is probable that turnip seed can only be grown to advantage in particular circumstances of soil and situation. In most cases it is, however, well for the farmer to raise his own seed, as that of the shops is seldom to be fully depended upon,

4913. The diseases and injuries to which turnips are liable are various. At their first appearance their leaves are liable to the attacks of the fly (Aphis, and Crysomela, L.), of the caterpillar (Papilio noctua, &c. L.), of the slug (Limar, L.), and of the mildew. Their bulbs and roots are attacked by worms of different kinds; by a singular tendency to monstrosity, known provincially by the name of fingers and toes; by the anbury; by canker, and by wasting or gangrene from water or frost. Of all or most of these injurious diseases, it may be observed, that they neither admit of prevention or cure by art. Under

favorable circumstances of soil, climate, culture, and weather, they seldom occur; and therefore all that the cultivator can do is to prepare and manure his land properly, and in the sowing season supply water when the weather is deficient in showers or the soil in humidity.

4914. The fly attacks the turnip when in the seed-leaf, and either totally devours it, or partially eats the leaves and centre-bud, so as to impede the progress of the plants to the second or rough leaves. Whether the eggs of these flies are deposited on the plants or in the soil, does not appear to be ascertained; in all probability they are attached to the former, as in the gooseberry caterpillar, and most cases of flies and insects which feed on plants. Preparations and mixtures of the seed, as already treated of (4890.), is all that has yet been done in the way of preventive to this evil.

4915. The caterpillar makes its appearance after the plants have produced three or more rough leaves; these they eat through, and either destroy or greatly impede the progress of the plants. There can be little doubt that the eggs of these caterpillars are deposited on the leaves of the plants by a species of moth, as the caterpillar may be detected when not larger in diameter than a hair. As preventives to the moths from fixing on the turnips for a deposit for their eggs, it has been proposed to place vessels with tar in different parts of the field, the smell of which is known to be very offensive to moths and all insects; by causing a thick offensive smoke to pass over the ground at the time when it is supposed the moths or parent flies were about to commence their operations. To destroy the caterpillar itself, watering with tobacco water, lime water, strong brine, and laying on ashes, barley awns, &c. have been proposed.

4916. The slug and snail attack the plants both above and under ground, and eat both the leaves and roots. Rolling, soot, quick-lime, awns, &c. have been proposed to annoy them; but the only effectual mode is, immediately after the turnips are sown, to strew the ground with cabbage leaves, or leaves of any of the Brassica tribe. On these the slugs will pasture, especially if they be beginning to decay (which produces a sweetness), and may be gathered off by women or children every morning. By procuring as many cabbage leaves, or handsfull of decaying pea haulm, or any similar vegetable, as will go over a ridge or two, say at the rate of a leaf to every square yard, a whole field may soon be cleared by picking off the slugs and removing the leaves once in twenty-four hours. This mode we have found most effectual in clearing a whole field of slugs, and it is extensively practised by market and other gardeners. (Encyc. of Gard. § 2275.)

4917. The mildew and blight attack the turnip in different stages of its progress, and always retard its growth. Its effects may be palliated by watering and strewing the leaves with sulphur; but this will hardly be considered applicable to whole fields.

4918. The worms which attack the roots, when they commence their ravages at an early period, impede their growth, and ruin or greatly injure the crop. They admit of no remedy or prevention.

4919. The forked excrescences, known as fingers and toes, is considered an alarming disease, and hitherto it can neither be guarded against nor cured. The following account of it is given by William Spence, president of the Holderness Agricultural Society in 1811. "In some plants, the bulb itself is split into several finger diverging lobes. More fre. quently the bulb is externally tolerably perfect, and the tap-root is the part principally diseased; being either wholly metamorphosed into a sort of misshapen secondary bulb, often larger than the real bulb, and closely attached to it, or having excrescences of various shapes, frequently not unlike human toes, (whence the name of the disease, either springing immediately from its sides, or from the fibrous roots that issue from it. In this last case, each fibre often swells into several knobs, so as distantly to resemble the runners and accompanying tubers of a potatoe; and not seldom one turnip will exhibit a combination of all these different forms of the disease. These distortions manifest themselves at a very early stage of the turnip's growth; and plants, scarcely in the rough leaf, will exhibit excrescences, which differ in nothing else than size from those of the full-grown root. 4920. The leaves discover no unusual appearance, except that in hot weather they become flaccid and droop; from which symptom, the presence of the disease may be surmised without examining the roots. These continue to grow for some months, but without attaining any considerable size, the excrescences enlarging at the same time. If divided at this period with a knife, both the bulb and the excrescences are found to be perfectly solid, and internally to differ little in appearance from a healthy root, except that they are of a more mealy and less compact consistency, and are interspersed with more numerous and larger sap-vessels. The taste, too, is more acrid; and, on this account, sheep neglect the diseased plants. Towards the approach of autumn, the roots, in proportion as they are more or less diseased, be come gangrenous and rot, and are either broken (as frequently happens) by high winds, or gradually dissolved by the rain. Some, which have been partially diseased, survive the winter; but of the rest, at this period, no other vestige remains than the vacant patches which they occupied at their first appearance. 4921. This disease is not owing to the seed, nor to the time of sowing, nor to any quality of the soil, either original or induced by any particular mode of cropping or of tillage; and Spence adds, that the most attentive and unbiassed consideration of the facts has led him to infer that the disease, though not produced by any insect that has yet been discovered, is yet caused by some unobserved species, which either biting the turnip in the earliest stage of its growth, or insinuating its egg into it, infuses at the same time into the wound a liquid which communicates to the sap-vessels a morbid action, causing them to form the excrescences in question.

4922. For the prevention of this disease, marl has been recommended by Sir Joseph Banks and others; and where marl cannot be procured, it has been thought that an addition of mould of any kind, that has not borne turnips, will be advantageous; such as a dressing taken from banks, woodlands, ditches, &c. and mixed up with a good dose of lime. But lime alone has been tried in vain; and no great dependence can be placed upon fresh mould, as this disease has been known to prevail upon lands that had scarcely ever before borne a crop of turnips. (Farmer's Magazine, vol. xiii.)

4923. The anbury is a disease in the roots of turnips which is thus described by Marshal in his Rural Economy of Norfolk: It is a large excrescence, which forms itself below the apple. It grows to the size of both the hands, and, as soon as the hard weather sets in, or it is, by its own nature, brought to maturity, becomes putrid, and smells very offensively. At present, the state of three specimens which have been taken up and exa. mined attentively, is this: - The apples of the turnips are just forming (about the size of walnuts in the husk), while the anburies are already as big as the egg of a goose. They are irregular and uncouth in their form, with inferior excrescences (resembling the lobes of ginger) hanging to them. On cutting them, their general appearance is that of a hard turnip; but on examining them through a magnifier, there are veins, or string-like vessels, dispersed among the pulp. The smell and taste somewhat resemble those of turnips, but without their mildness, having an austere and somewhat disagreeable flavor, resembling that of an old stringy turnip. The tops of those which are much affected, turn yellow, and flag with the heat of the sun; so that, in the day-time, they are obviously distinguishable from those which are healthy. It seems to be an idea among farmers, that the cause of the anbury is the soil being tired of turnips; owing to their having been too often sown on the same land. This, however, Marshal says, is positively erroneous; for the piece from which these specimens were drawn, was an old orchard, and never before bore turnips in the memory of man. The cause of this disease is probably not yet well ascertained; but if drought does not immediately produce it, the coincidence of a remarkably dry season, and a remarkably anburied turnip crop, justifies a suspicion, that the former does in some measure contribute to promote the latter. Marshal seems, indeed, to conceive that it is caused by some kind of grub or other, that, wounding the vessels of the tap-root, diverts the course of the sap; which, instead of forming the apple, forms this excrescence.

4924. The canker attacks the roots and partly the bulbs of turnips, and is known by the ulcerated appearance it produces. Some consider it owing to the presence of too much iron in the soil, and recommend liming as a preventive.

4925. Wasting and putrefaction, from excess of water or frost, are to be prevented by earthing up the bulbs, or taking up and storing.

SECT. III. The Carrot. - Daucus carota, L. Pentan. Dig. L. and Umbelliferæ, J. Carotte, Fr; Gelbe Rübe, Ger. ; and Carota, Ital.

As

4926. The carrot is a biennial plant, a native of Britain; but though long known as a garden plant it is comparatively but of recent introduction in agriculture. It appears to have been cultivated from an early period in Germany and Flanders, and introduced from the latter country to Kent and Suffolk early in the 16th century. the carrot requires a deep soil inclining to sand, it can never enter so generally into cultivation as the potatoe or turnip. But as observed by a judicious writer, it has been too much neglected on lands where it would have yielded a more valuable product, perhaps, than any bulbous or tap-rooted plant whatever. Several contradictory experiments in its culture have been detailed in a number of publications, from which the practical husbandman will be at a loss to draw any definite conclusion. But, in a recent communication to the Board of Agriculture, from Robert Burrows, an intelligent Norfolk farmer, who has cultivated carrots on a large scale, and with great success, for several years, so accurate an account is presented of the culture, application, and extraordinary value of this root, that carrots will probably soon enter more largely into the rotation of crops on suitable soils. (Supp. &c.)

4927. The varieties of carrot cultivated in gardens are numerous and readily increased by the usual means; but the only sort adapted for the field is the long-red or field carrot. New seed is most essential, as it will not vegetate the second year. Old seed, or a

mixture of old and new, and also the mixture of the horn carrot, the seed of which is sent over in large quantities from Holland, ought to be carefully avoided.

4928. The best soil for the carrot is a deep rich sandy loam; such a soil ought at least to be a foot deep, and all equally good from top to bottom. On any other the field cultue of the carrot will not answer.

4929. In preparing the soil for the carrot, it is essential to plough it before winter that it may be pulverized by frost; and to work it well by the plough and cultivator in spring, to at least the depth of a foot. This deep tillage may be perfectly accomplished

either by means of the trench-plough following the common one, or by the common one alone, with a good strength of team; but the former method is to be preferred, wherever the lands are inclined to be stiff or heavy. Three ploughings are mostly found sufficient, where the land has been previously in a state of tillage; but more may in other cases be necessary. The first ploughing should be made to the depth of ten, twelve, or fourteen inches, and be performed when the soil is tolerably dry, about the beginning of October. It may remain in this condition till towards the middle of February, when it should be turned over a second time, but in a cross direction, to nearly the same depths. In March, a third ploughing may be given, in order to the putting in of the seed. This may be somewhat lighter than the preceding ones. As soon as the last ploughing has been given in March, the land should be harrowed, and the surface made as fine as possible.

4930. In Suffolk the farmers sow carrots after turnips, barley, and pease set upon a rye-grass ley; the crops upon the first have generally been most productive; next to that they prefer the latter. In the first place they feed off the turnips by the beginning of February, and then lay the land up on small balks or furrows, in which state it remains till the second week in March, when it is harrowed down, double-furrowed to the depth of about twelve inches, and the seed sown.

4931. The climate most suitable to the carrot is the same as for the turnip; but they will thrive better than the turnip in a dry and warm climate, and are consequently of better growth in the south of England and France, in proportion to their size, in moist climates as Holland and Ireland, than the turnip.

4932. Manure, according to some, should not be given to carrots the year they are sown, as it is alleged when the roots meet with it they become forked, scabbed, and wormy. This, however, is chiefly applicable to cases in which recent unfermented manure has been given, or where other manure has not been properly broken in pieces and spread over the soil or in the drills. The Suffolk and Norfolk farmers, who are the best carrot growers, always use dung; a suitable proportion of well-rotted farm-yard dung being constantly turned into the soil at the last ploughing in March, as it has been fully shewn, by various trials detailed in The Annals of Agriculture, and other books on husbandry, that, though good crops of carrots may be occasionally grown without the use of manure, it is only by the liberal application of that substance that the greatest produce possible can be obtained, as they are in general found to bear a relative proportion to the quantity that may have been employed.

4933. Burrows prepares the land with a good dressing of about sixteen cart loads per acre of rotten farm-yard manure, or cottager's ashes: the load about as much as three able horses can draw, and, if bought, costs about four shillings and sixpence per load, besides the carting on the land. He usually sows wheat stubbles after clover, ploughing the first time in autumn, and once more in the early part of the month of February, if the weather permits; setting on the manure at the time of sowing, which is about the last week in March, or sometimes as late as the second week in April.

4934. In Suffolk, when carrots are intended to be sown after pease, they usually plough the stubble as soon as the harvest is over, in order that the land may clear itself of weeds; in December, it is laid up in small balks to receive the benefit of the frosts; in February, it is harrowed down, and manured at the rate of fifteen loads per acre; the manure is ploughed in to the depth of about four inches, and in the month of March the land is double-furrowed, and the seed sown. By pursuing this method, they say, the manure lies in the centre of the soil, and not only affords nourishment and support to the carrot in its perpendicular progress, but renders it easy to be turned up by a single ploughing, and greatly promotes the growth of the succeeding crop of barley. In Norfolk, it is the practice to sow carrots after a crop of turnips. The manure, after being put on the land in the beginning of March, is first ploughed in with a common plough, and afterwards trench-ploughed about fourteen or fifteen inches deep; it is then harrowed very fine, and the seed sown about the middle of March.

4935. The season for sowing the carrot preferred by Burrows, is the last week in March or first in April; but he prefers the first period, having generally found early sown crops the most productive.

4936. The usual preparation of the seed for sowing is by mixing it with earth or sand, to cause it to separate more freely; but Burrows adds water, turns over the mixture of seeds and moist earth several times, and thus brings it to the point of vegetating before he sows it. "Having weighed the quantity of seed to be sown, and collected sand or fine mould, in the proportion of about two bushels to an acre, I mix the seed with the sand or mould, eight or ten pounds to every two bushels, and this is done about a fortnight or three weeks before the time I intend sowing; taking care to have the heaps turned over every day, sprinkling the outside of them with water each time of turning over, that every part of the sand heaps may be equally moist, and that vegetation may take place alike throughout. I have great advantage in preparing the seed so