334 



Twnip Culture. — Lucerne. 



Vol. IV. 



lowest parts; and this land, after the first 

 crop of corn or potatoes laid down to grass, 

 has produced, for several successive years, 

 never less than three tons, and frequently as 

 high as four tons, of excellent English hay, 

 herdsgrass and clover, to the acre. This hay 

 has never been worth less than twelve dol- 

 lars the ton ; and in some seasons a hay of 

 no better quality has sold at sixteen and 

 twenty dollars the ton. 



Adjacent to these two improved spots are 

 several fields of precisely the same kind of 

 intervale land, that have not yielded for many 

 years, and will not now yield more than half 

 a ton of hay to the acre. This cold intervale 

 land is valued only at forty and fifty dollars 

 the acre — it will not pay for the use of that 

 price either as hay or pasturage, because 

 half a ton of this inferior hay is worth not 

 over five dollars, barely paying for the labour 

 and the taxes, without a dollar of income. 



Now if an acre of this cold land, producing 

 half a ton of poor hay in its natural state, is 

 worth fifty dollars, what must be the value 

 of an improved acre that will produce three 

 tons of the best English hay ! The small 

 piece of land belonging to Gen. Low, being 

 nearer to our former premises, has been more 

 particularly under our observation. Ever 

 since the year 1832, that piece of ground, 

 without ploughing, and perhaps but with 

 once a light spreading of manure over it 

 after it was laid down to grass, has averaged 

 more than four tons to the acre in a year at a 

 single mowing. Nothing else, since the 

 first application of manure, has been done to 

 it than to take off the crop. The great crop, 

 we must believe, is derived not from the 

 strength of tho manure alone ; the cold, 

 clayey soil, drained of its redundant water, 

 and stimulated by the manure, turns out 

 the increased crop principally from its own 

 strength. All the draining of this piece of 

 land has been simply the opening of a furrow 

 ditch on either side, leading to the main 

 ditch through which the cold brook passes 

 across it. — Visitor. 



Turnip Culture. 



A very large amount of land in England 

 is cultivated in turnips, and fields of this 

 crop of three, four, and even five hundred 

 acres, are sometimes seen, though the com- 

 mon fields are much less : and it may be 

 observed here, that in the richest and best- 

 cultivated parts of England, inclosures of 

 ten, fifteen or twenty acres, are more common. 

 Since the introduction of the turnip culture, 

 bullocks and sheep have trebled in number. 

 Turnips are not great exhausters of land ; 

 and they furnish abundant food for animals. 

 Let us suppose that ten bushels of turnips 



can be raised at the same cost as one bushel 

 of oats — the great difference in the two crops 

 is to be found in the farmer's cattle yard, 

 and then in the barn yard ; here is the test 

 of their comparative value ; and this is the 

 secret of the great advantages which follow 

 from the cultivation of roots. In England, 

 the value of manure in agriculture is well 

 appreciated — a writer states the extraordinary 

 fact, that the value of the animal manure 

 annually applied to the crops in England, at 

 current prices, surpasses the value of the 

 whole amount of their foreign commerce,* 

 and there is no doubt that it far exceeds it! 

 The farmer then, from his green crops, and 

 by a regular system of rotation, finds green 

 food for his cattle, and wheat for the market. 

 — Webster'' s Speech in Boston. 



To the Editor of the Farmers' Cabinet. 

 Lucerne. 



Sir, — As I consider the Farmers' Cabinet 

 the channel through which we first obtained 

 information, in this part of the country, re- 

 specting a crop which is likely to make a 

 great stir among us, I think its pages should 

 be devoted to the record of any circumstances 

 which might be found to arise relating to its 

 culture, which, if I mistake not, is about to 

 engross a considerable share of the attention 

 of the agricultural community throughout 

 the Union. I must, however, deprecate a 

 Merino-multicaulis-mania in the future pro- 

 secution of the matter; let us sit down 

 " doggedly to the task " of examining its 

 real preten'sions, and the best modes of in- 

 troducing it to notice, by proper cultivation 

 on suitable soils and under favourable cir- 

 cumstances, and record the result. 



The accounts which appeared some time 

 since in the Cabinet, relative to the crops of 

 lucerne in the island of Jersey, (England,) 

 seemed at the time, to say the least of them, 

 very astonishing; and if they had been sup- 

 posed to be quite correct, must, ere this, have 

 called very general attention to the cultiva- 

 tion of that crop amongst us; unfortunately 

 they came upon us just at the time of the 

 morus fever, when we did not suppose that 

 we should ever require any other mode of 

 making bread, and people could think of 



♦Tlie above fact is very extraordinary, l)rit it re»t» 

 on good aulhority ; and when it is considered that this 

 is of course the product of agriculture, as well as going 

 in the jjrcat circle to renew and extend these products, 

 we niust have strong impressions of the amazing ex- 

 tent of this fjreat interest. In this case, cattle manure 

 is valued at As. sterling, sheep at 'is., horse at 4s., pigs, 

 poultry, &c. at 3s. per load, making a grand total of 

 X.W,Hf.(l,000 sterling, or nearly :)()0.000,00U doUars ! and 

 this too, is exclusive of the (piantity dropped by cattle 

 on land during summer, autumn, &c. — amounting 

 perhaps to one-third more — and exclusive of lime, 

 moss, shells, fish, bone-dust, dec. dtc— JU'QMce/i'4 British 

 m^tistics. 



