RUT A BAG A CULTURE 



sheltered buds for the sheep to eat until the coming of the natural 

 grass and the general pasturage. 



26. I was much surprised at reading this passage ; having 

 observed, when I lived in Pennsylvania, how prodigiously the 

 root crops of every kind flourished and succeeded with only 

 common skill and care ; and, in 1815, having by that time had 

 many crops of Ruta Baga exceeding thirty tons, or, about one 

 thousand five hundred heaped bushels to the acre, at Botley, I formed 

 the design of sending out to America a treatise on the culture 

 and uses of that root, which, I was perfectly well convinced, 

 could be raised with more ease here than in England, and, that 

 it might be easily preserved during the whole year, if necessary, I 

 had proved in many cases. 



27. If Mr. CHANCELLOR LIVINGSTON, whose public-spirit is 

 manifested fully in his excellent little work, which he modestly 

 calls an Essay, could see my ewes and lambs, and hogs and cattle, 

 at this &quot; critical season &quot; (I write on the 27th of March), with more 

 Ruta Baga at their command than they have mouths to employ 

 on it ; if he could see me, who am on a poor exhausted piece of 

 land, and who found it covered with weeds and brambles in the 

 month of June last, who found no manure, and who have brought 

 none ; if he could see me overstocked, not with mouths, but with 

 food, owing to a little care in the cultivation of this invaluable 

 root, he would, I am sure, have reason to be convinced, that, if 

 any farmer in the United States is in want of food at this pinching 

 season of the year, the fault is neither in the soil nor in the climate. 

 28. It is, therefore, of my mode of cultivating this root on this 

 Island that I mean, at present, to treat ; to which matter I shall 

 add, in another PART of my work, an account of my experiments as 

 to the MANGEL WURZEL, or SCARCITY ROOT ; though, as will be 

 seen, I deem that root, except in particular cases, of very inferior 

 importance. The parsnip, the carrot, the cabbage, are all ex 

 cellent in their kind and in their uses ; but, as to these, I have 

 not yet made, upon a scale sufficiently large here, such experi 

 ments as would warrant me in speaking with any degree of con 

 fidence. Of these, and other matters, I propose to treat in a 

 future PART, which I shall, probably, publish towards the latter 

 end of this present year. 



29. The Ruta Baga is a sort of turnip well known in the State 

 of New York, where, under the name of Russia turnip, it is used 

 for the Table from February to July. But, as it may be more 

 of a stranger in other parts of the country, it seems necessary to 

 give it enough of description to enable every reader to distinguish 

 it from every other sort of turnip. 



30. The leaf of every other sort of turnip is of a yellowish green, 

 while the leaf of the Ruta Baga is of a blueish green, like the green 

 of peas, when of nearly their full size, or like the green of a young 

 and thrifty early Yorkshire cabbage. Hence it is, I suppose, that 

 some persons have called it the Cabbage-turnip. But the charac- 



