196 PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. Part III. 



the work is performed with three-pronged forks ; the children cut off the tops, laying 

 them and the roots in separate heaps, ready for the teams to take away. " I take up in 

 autunm a sufficient quantity to have a store to last me out any considerable frost or 

 snow that may happen in the winter months ; the rest of the crop I leave in the ground, 

 preferring them fresh out of the earth for both horses and bullocks. The carrots keep 

 best in the ground, nor can the severest frosts do them any material injury ; the first 

 week in March, it is necessary to have the remaining part of the crop taken up, and the 

 land cleared for barley ; the carrots can either be laid in a heap with a small quantity 

 of straw covered over them, or they may be laid into some empty outhouse or barn, in 

 heaps of many hundred bushels, provided they are put together dry. This latter cir- 

 cumstance, it is indispensably necessary to attend to, for if laid together in large heaps 

 when wet, they will certainly sustain much injury. Such as I want to keep for the 

 use of my horses until the months of May and June, in drawing over the heaps, (which is 

 necessary to be done the latter end of April, when the carrots begin to sprout at the 

 crown very fast) , I throw aside the healthy and most perfect roots, and have their crowns 

 cut completely off and laid by themselves ; by this means, carrots may be kept the 

 month of June out in a high state of perfection." (^Communications to the Board of 

 Agriculture, vol. vii. p. 72.) 



4943. The storing a whole crop of carrots maybe a desirable practice when winter 

 wheat is to follow them, in which case the same mode may be adopted as for turnips or 

 potatoes, but with fewer precautions against the frost, as the carrot, if perfectly dry, is 

 very little injured by that description of weather. 



4944. 2'he produce of an acre of carrots in Sufiblk, according to Arthur Young, is 

 at an average 350 bushels ; but Burrows's crops averaged upwards of 800 bushels per 

 acre, which considerably exceeds the largest crop of potatoes. 



4945. The uses to which the carrot is applied in Sufiblk are various. Large quan- 

 tities are sent to the London markets, and also given as food to different kinds of live 

 stock. Horses are remarkably fond of carrots, and it is even said, that when oats and 

 carrots are given together, the horses leave the oats and eat the carrots. The ordinary 

 allowance is about forty or fifty pounds a day to each horse. Carrots when mixed with 

 chalF, that is, cut straw, and a little hay, without corn, keep horses in excellent condition 

 for performing all kinds of ordinary labor. The farmers begin to feed their horses with 

 carrots in December, and continue to give them chiefly that kind of provender till the 

 beginning or middle of May ; to which period, with proper care, carrots may be pre- 

 served. As many of the farmers in that country are of opinion that carrots are not so 

 good for horses in winter as in spring, they give only half the above allowance of carrots 

 at first, and add a little corn for a few weeks after they begin to use carrots. 



4946i. IVie application of the carrot to the feeding of working cattle and hogs is thus 

 detailed by Burrows. " I begin to take up the carrot crop in the last week of October, 

 as at that time I generally finish soiling my horses with lucern, and now solely depend 

 upon my carrots, with a proper allowance of hay, as winter food for my horses, until 

 about the first week of June following, when the lucern is again ready for soiling. By 

 reducing this practice to a system, I have been enabled to feed ten cart horses through- 

 out the winter months for these last six years, without giving them any corn whatever, 

 and have at the same time effected a considerable saving of hay, from what I found 

 necessary to give to the same number of horses, when according to the usual custom of 

 the country, I fed my horses with corn and hay. I give them to my cart-horses in the pro- 

 portion of seventy pound weight of carrots a horse per day, upon an average, not allowing 

 them quite so many in the very short days, and sometimes more than that quantity in 

 the spring months, or to tlie amount of what I withheld in the short winter days. The 

 men Who tend the horsee, slice some of the carrots in the cut chaff or hay, and barn-door 

 refuse ; the rest of the carrots they give whole to the horses at night, with a small quan- 

 tity of hay in their racks ; and with this food my horses generally enjoy uninterrupted 

 health. I mention this, as I believe that some persons think that carrots onli/, given as 

 food to horses, are injurious to their constitutions; but most of the prejudices of man- 

 kind have no better foundation, and are taken up at random, or inherited from their 

 grandfathers. So successful have I been with carrots as a winter food for horses, that 

 with the assistance of lucern for soiling in summer, I have been enabled to prove by 

 experiments conducted under my own personal inspection, that an able Norfolk team- 

 horse, fully worked two journies a day, winter and summer, may be kept the entire year 

 round upon the produce of only one statute acre of land- I have likewise applied car- 

 rots with great profit to the feeding of hogs in winter, and by that means have made my 

 straw into a most excellent manure, without the aid of neat cattle; the hogs so fed are 

 sold on Norwich hill to the London dealers as porkers." The profit of carrots so applied, 

 he shews in a subsequent statement, together with an experiment of feeding four Galloway 

 bullocks with carrots, against four others fed in the common way with turnips and hay. 

 {Communications, ^c.) 



