Book VI. THE TURNIP. 791 



wet or stormy weather, are so obvious, as fully to justify a recommendation of the 

 practice. 



4906. Replacing and earthing have also been tried with success, especially with the 

 Swedish turnip. JBeing pulled and freed from their roots and leaves, they are carted to 

 a piece of well worked dry soil near the farmery, and there deposited in rows, so close 

 as nearly to touch each other in the bottom of shallow furrows, the plough covering one row 

 as another furrow is opened. In this way many tons are quickly earthed in, and on 

 a very small space, and they can be turned out when wanted with equal facility. (Farmer's 

 Magazine^ vol. xxiii. p. 282.) 



4907. The produce of turnips cultivated in the broad -cast manner in England, varies 

 from five to fifteen tons per acre : the latter is reckoned a very heavy crop. In Northum- 

 berland and Berwickshire, a good crop of white globe turnips drilled usually weighs from 

 twenty-five to thirty tons per acre, the yellow and Swedish commonly a few tons less. Of 

 late there have been instances of much heavier crops, and in Ayrshire, it would appear, that 

 above sixty tons have been raised on an English acre, the leaves not included. {Farmer's 

 Magazine, vol. xv. and xvi. ) But such an extraordinary produce must have been ob- 

 tained by the application of more manure than can be provided, without injustice to 

 other crops, from the home resources of a farm ; and where turnips form a regular crop 

 in the rotation, no such produce is to be expected under any mode of culture. 



4908. The produce of the turnip in nutritive matter^ as proved by Sir H. DaVy, was 

 forty-two parts in a thousand ; of which seven were mucilage, thirty-four sugar, and one 

 gluten. Swedish turnips afforded sixty four- parts in a thousand of nutritive matter, of 

 which nine were starch, fifty- one sugar, two gluten, and two extract. According to Von 

 Thaer, 100 lbs. of turnips are equal to twenty-two of hay; and an ox to get fat on 

 turnips ought to have one -third of its weight daily. 



4909. To raise turnip seed, the usual mode is to select the most approved specimens of 

 the variety to be raised at the season when they are full grown, and either remove all 

 others from the field and leave them to shoot into flower stems next year, or to trans- 

 plant them to a place by themselves where they will be secure from the farina of other 

 plants of their genus. In either case they must be protected by earthing up from the 

 winter's frost and rains, and in the ripening season from the birds. 



4910. 7%^ A^oz/o/Arse^f^ growers have a sort of theory on the subject of transplanting- turnips for seed 

 which it may be worth while to attend to. According to that theory where turnip seed is collected from 

 such turnips as have been sown three or four years in succession, the roots are liable to be numerous and 

 long, and the necks or parts between the bulbs and leaves coarse and thick : and when taken from such as 

 have been transplanted every year, these parts are liable to become too fine, and the tap-roots to be dimi- 

 nished in too great a proportion. Of course the most certain plan is to procure seed from turnips that are 

 transplanted one year and sown the next ; or, if they be transplanted once in three years, it is supposed, 

 that the stock may be preserved in a proper state of perfection. It is stated, that the method of perform- 

 ing this business in the best way, is to select such turnips as are of the best kinds and of the most perfect 

 forms, from the field crops, and, after cutting their tops off, to transplant them, about the month of 

 November, or following month, into a piece of ground that has been put into a fine state of tillage by 

 repeated ploughing or digging over, and which should be situated as near the house as if can be, in order 

 that the birds may be better kept from it. The seed will mostly be ready for gathering in the end of July, 

 or in the following month. 



4911. Other cultivators, however, advise that the seed collected from a few turnips thus transplanted, 

 should be preserved and sown in drills, in order to raise plants for seed for the general crop", drawing out 

 all such as are weak and improper, leaving only those that are strong and which take the lead ; and that 

 when these have formed (bulbs, to again take out such as do not appear good and perfect, as by this 

 means turnip seed may be procured, not only of a more '.vigorous nature, but which is capable of vege- 

 tating with less moisture, and which produces stronger and more hardy plants. The practice of transplant- 

 ing the whole of the turnips for seed for the main crops being contended to be not only highly expensive, but 

 injurious, by diminishing the strength of the plants trdrn the destruction of their tap-roots. Very good 

 seed may, however, be raised in either of the methods that have been here described. 



4912. After the seed has become fully ripened, it is mostly reaped by cutting off part of the stems, and 

 afterwards tying them up into sheaves, which, when sufficiently dry, are put into long stacks, and kept 

 through the winterj in orddr to be threshed out about the time when it is wanted. But as in this way 

 much seed is liable to be lost, by its readiness to escape from the pods in which it is contained, it is advised 

 as a much better practice to have it immediately threshed out, either upon a cloth in the field where it 

 grew, or in some other convenient place, being then put into bags proper for the purpose and placed in a 

 situation which is perfectly dry. From seed crops of this sort being subject to much injury and loss in 

 different ways, the quantity of produce must be very different under different circumstances ; but it 

 may in general be stated at not less than from twenty "to twenty-four bushels the acre. And the price of 

 turnip seed being seldom less than seven or eight shillings the bushel, on account of the great demand for 

 it, it may at first appear to be a very advantageous sort of culture ; but from the exhausting nature of the 

 crop, the loss sustained in grain, and the quantity of manure afterwards necessary, it is probable that 

 turnip seed can Only be grown to advantage in particular circumstances of soil and' situation. In most 

 cases it is, however, well for the farmer to raise his own seed, as that of the shops is seldom to be fully 

 depended uijon. 



4913. the diseases and injuries to which turnips are liable are various. At their first 

 appearance their leaves are liable to the attacks of the fly (Jphis, and Crysomela, L.), of 

 the caterpillar (Papilio noctua, c^c. L.)> of the slug {Liniax, L.), and of the mildew. 

 Their bulbs and roots are attacked by worms of different kinds ; by a singular tendency 

 to monstrosity, known provinpially by the name of fingers and toes; by the anbury; by 

 canker, and by wasting or gangrene from water or frost. Of all or most of these injurious 

 diseases, it may be observed, that they neither admit of prevention or cure by art. Under 



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