ROOT CROPS 



289 



Danish Ballhead cabbage 



chief difficulty to 



be overcome. The 



use of root crops 



of any kind as 



food for domestic 



animals is of com- 

 paratively recent 



origin. Their im- 

 provement and use 



for this purpose 



appears to have 



arisen in the 



Netherlands, Germany, and other low lying regions of northern 



Europe in the fifteenth 

 and sixteenth centuries. 

 Although the common 

 garden beet had been 

 tried for stock feeding 

 earlier, the improved 

 mangel-wurzel was in- 

 troduced both into Eng- 

 land and America about 

 the middle of the eight- 

 eenth century. 



II. TURNIPS, RUTABAGAS, 

 KOHLRABI AND CABBAGES 



363. Types. A multi- 

 tude of cultivated forms 

 is supposed to have 

 arisen from Brassica 

 oleracea L., a plant na- 

 tive to the coasts of 

 western and southern 



Green top Scotch yellow hybrid-turnip Europe. 1 These forms 



1 U. S. Dept. Agr., Expt. Sta. Record XI, p. 6. 



