108 RUTA BAGA CULTURE. [PART I. 



would very cheerfully pay him ten guineas a 

 year each. 



39. The reader will easily judge, then, of my 

 anxiety to know, whether this mortal enemy of 

 the farmer existed in Long Island. This was 

 the first question which I put to every one of 

 my neighbours, and I augured good, from their 

 not appearing to understand what f meant. 

 However, as my little plots of turnips came up 

 successively, I watched them as our farmers do 

 their fields in England. To my infinite satis 

 faction, I found that my alarms had been ground 

 less. This circumstance, besides others that 1 

 have to mention by and by, gives to the stock- 

 farmer in America so great an advantage over 

 the farmer in England, or in any part of the 

 middle and northern parts of Europe, that it is 

 truly wonderful that the culture of this root 

 has not, long ago, become general in this 

 country. 



40. The time of sowing, then, may be, as cir 

 cumstances may require, from thettth of June 

 to about the 10th of July, as the result of my 

 experiments will now show. The plants sown 

 during the first fifteen days of June grew well, 

 and attained great size and weight; but, though 

 they did not actually go off to seed, they were 

 very little short of so doing. They rose into 

 large and long necks, and sent out sprouts from 



