138 On the Culture of Turnips. 



same time promote, nay ensure, the best and cleanest crops of 

 grain in succession. 



Let us examine what the very able Reporter of Middlesex, 

 John Middleton, Esq. says on this subject ; for it can never be 

 loo often printed or read. 



" Turnips," he says, " are undoubtedly the basis of the best 

 husbandry, and in every part of this island they will always be a 

 principal crop in the most improved methods of cultivating loamy 

 sands. They also grow very well on well-drained black peat 

 earth, and on such strong loams as are rich. They support and 

 make fat a very increased quantity of animal food, and by the 

 dung and urine of fat cattle the land becomes more highly en- 

 riched than by any other means. It is an advantage of great 

 importance, that they require such late sowing as to give the 

 farmer an opportunity of reaping two green crojis on the same 

 land in one year, both of which may be fed by cattle. A suc- 

 cession of these crops (tares and turnips) may be raised and con- 

 sumed on dry land till it acquires any desired degree of richness, 

 and will feed more bullocks and sheep than the best grass-land in 

 the kingdom; and, what is of great consequence, it will be per- 

 fectly clean, and tit for every sort of corn during the whole time; 

 but they are crops that are perfectly incon)patiljle with common 

 fields, and for that reason, more than any other, they are so 

 little grown in England. Inclose the common fields, and the 

 tare and turnip husbandry will become general, which will be the 

 most eflfectual means of loading our shambles with meat, and 

 filling our granaries with corn." 



We will now investigate in detail how this system operates, 

 " to produce the best crops at the least expense, and at the same 

 time ensure the best and cleanest crops of grain in succession," 

 as 1 have above asserted. 



The man who, the moment his wheat is cut, and even before 

 it is carried, begins to break up his stubble for tares, is at no 

 more expense in this operation, than those who give their land a 

 winter-ploughing as a preparation for turnips ; and in the spring, 

 while the latter are laboriously and expensively giving their lands 

 three, four, and sometimes five ploughings, as a preparation for 

 turnips, and carting out their dung, his tares are growing on the 

 land intended for tur.iips ; by the consumption of which, by sheep, 

 on the same land, in the month of May, he not only manures 

 his land by their dung and urine, in a much cleaner way than 

 those who haul out their farm-yard and stable dung for their 

 turnips, but he is afterwards enabled, by two ploughings at most, 

 and in some seasons, and on some lands, with one, to produce a 

 fallow, after the consumption of the tares, that for cleanliness 

 and friability shall rival, if not surpass, the fallows of the most 



expensive 



