116 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



corn, at a dollar a bushel, as the net proceeds of my four and 

 a half acres of land. 



On this same land, this season, I have raised eight hundred 

 and fifty bushels of mangolds and sugar beets, nine hundred 

 bushels of ruta-bagas, and eighteen hundred bushels of carrots, 

 nearly eight hundred bushels of roots to the acre. The ruta- 

 bagas and beets were fair, but the carrots were very large, long 

 and heavy, and constituting by far the most valuable portion of 

 the crop, and showing, by their length, the advantage of 

 thorough drainage for this useful and important root. Esti- 

 mating the mangolds, sugar beets and ruta-bagas at a shilling 

 a bushel, and the carrots at eight dollars per ton, the value of 

 the crop is six hundred and fifty-one dollars. As I have not 

 calculated the value of the manure in the cultivation of the 

 corn, so I will omit it in considering this root crop ; and I shall 

 estimate the expense of ploughing, sowing, weeding with horse 

 and hand power, and harvesting, at two hundred and fifty 

 dollars, (a large estimate, considering that the work was done 

 in mornings and foul weather, mostly by a force necessarily 

 employed in haying,) I have then four hundred dollars in roots, 

 as a comparison with two hundred and seventy in corn, after 

 giving corn all the advantage that has ever been claimed on 

 the score of fodder. Of the value of the two crops as food for 

 cattle, I leave others to judge — at the same time urging upon 

 all our Essex County farmers, large and small, the importance 

 and profit of roots in every good system of husbandry— especially 

 carrots, to the culture of which our soil seems to be peculiarly 

 adapted. 



But to return to the subject immediately before us — thorough 

 drainage. I am aware that there is much to be learned upon 

 this matter, still ; and that notwithstanding the attention which 

 has been bestowed upon it elsewhere, and the treatises which 

 have been written upon it, we are yet in the very commence- 

 ment of the business, and have not yet adopted it as a part of 

 our system of farming. We are still discussing how the water 

 enters the tile ; whether thorough drainage is profitable ; whether 

 it is adapted to our climate ; whether stone drains and open 

 drains are not just as good, and perhaps cheaper and better 

 than tile drains ; whether, after all, thorough drainage is of 

 any service to us. I hear these questions discussed daily by 



