CROPS. 259 



ance to a working Irishman is, from fourteen to sixteen pounds 

 of potatoes per day. It cannot be denied, however, in a moral 

 view, that potatoes to the Irish are an equivocal good. In order 

 to improvement, man requires a constant and severe stimulus to 

 exertion. The necessities of men are the excitements to indus 

 try and enterprise, and very often the foundation of their virtues. 

 But what hope can be entertained for the improvement of per 

 sons content to live upon the meanest fare, and in circumstances 

 of destitution barely compatible with existence, and to go on 

 and marry, and rear children, with no expectation or ambition 

 beyond that of a mud cabin, a peat fire, and a potato diet ? 



Next to potatoes and turnips, beets occupy a principal place 

 in English cultivation. Of beets, the field cultivation is limited 

 to the mangel-wurzel. These are cultivated in rows, upon ridges, 

 similar to the cultivation of turnips, about thirty inches apart ; 

 and though the seed is commonly dibbled in at six inches dis 

 tance in the rows, the plants are thinned out to a distance of one 

 foot. Deep cultivation is always strongly recommended for all 

 tap-rooted plants. An eminent farmer in Northamptonshire, 

 after having furrowed and manured the furrows for his mangel- 

 wurzel, as the wheels of the cart and the trampling of the horses 

 tend to harden the bottom of the furrow, before the land is 

 turned back upon it in order to form a ridge, passes down in 

 the furrow with a miner, that he may loosen and deepen it. A 

 miner is simply the colter of a plough, without the mould-board. 

 He speaks of this as being attended with great advantage. No 

 machine has yet been invented which may be safely trusted to 

 drop the seed. A wheel with pegs of about two inches in length, 

 and six inches apart, upon the outside of the wheel, which shall 

 make holes in the ground as the wheel revolves, handles like 

 those of a wheel-barrow being attached to it, is used to dibble 

 the land, into which children, who follow, drop the seed, one 

 being sufficient in each hole, as every capsule in fact contains 

 four seeds. The seeds are then covered with the head of a rake 

 or with the hand. The land between the rows should be kept 

 loose by ploughing, and thrown upon the rows, but not upon the 

 plants, whose nature it is to grow much out of ground. In 

 the latter part of the season, the under leaves may be gathered 

 and fed to milch cows, or sheep, or swine, with great advantage 



