RUT A BAG A CULTURE 



for, after all, what animal produces flesh meat like the hog ? 

 Applicable to all uses, either fresh or salted, is the meat. Good 

 in all its various shapes. The animal killable at all ages. Quickly 

 fatted. Good if half fat. Capable of supporting an immense 

 burden of fat. Demanding but little space for its accommoda 

 tion ; and yet, if grain and corn and milk are to be their principal 

 food, during their lives, they cannot multiply very fast ; because 

 many upon a farm cannot be kept to much profit. But, if, by 

 providing a sufficiency of Ruta Baga, a hundred pigs could be 

 raised upon a farm in a year, and carried on till fatting time, they 

 would be worth, when ready to go into the fatting sty, fifteen 

 dollars each. This would be something worth attending to ; 

 and the farm must become rich from the manure. The Ruta 

 Baga, taken out of the heaps early in April, will keep well and 

 sound all the summer ; and with a run in an orchard, or in a 

 grassy place, it will keep a good sort of hog always in a very 

 thriving, and even fleshy state. 



134. This root, being called a turnip, is regarded as a turnip, 

 as a common turnip, than which nothing can be much less re 

 sembling it. The common turnip is a very poor thing. The 

 poorest of all the roots of the bulb kind, cultivated in the fields ; 

 and the Ruta Baga, all taken together, is, perhaps, the very best. 

 It loses none of its good qualities by being long kept, though dry 

 all the while. A neighbour of mine in Hampshire, having saved 

 a large piece of Ruta Baga for seed, and having, after harvesting 

 the seed, accidentally thrown some of the roots into his yard, saw 

 his hogs eat these old roots, which had borne the seed. He gave 

 them some more, and saw that they ate them greedily. He, 

 therefore, went and bought a whole drove, in number about forty, 

 of lean pigs, of a good large size, brought them into his yard, 

 carted in the roots of his seed Ruta Baga, and, without having 

 given the pigs a handful of any other sort of food, so}d out his 

 pigs -as fat porkers. And, indeed, it is a fact well known, that sheep 

 and cattle, as well as hogs, will thrive upon this root after it has 

 borne seed, which is what, I believe, can be said of no other root 

 or plant. 



I 35- When we feed off our Ruta Baga in the fields, in England, 

 by sheep, there are small parts left by the sheep : the shells which 

 they have left after scooping out the pulp of the bulb ; the tap 

 root ; ^and other little bits. These are picked out of the ground, 

 and when washed by the rain, other sheep follow and live upon 

 them. Or, in default of other sheep, hogs or cattle are turned in 

 in dry weather, and they leave not a morsel. 



136. Nor are the greens to be forgotten. In England, they are 

 generally eaten by the sheep, when they are turned in upon them. 

 When the roots are taken up for uses at the home-stead, the 

 greens are given to store-pigs and lean cattle. I cut mine off, 

 while the roots were in the ground, and gave them to fatting 

 cattle upon grass land, alternately with Indian corn in the ear ; 



