X. 



THEORY AND PRACTICE. 



THE comparative failure of that portion of my first 

 Turnip crop, which had drawn so heavily and so 

 laboriously upon the meager resources of the farm- 

 yard, produced a changed position of the game, 

 which gave me some surprise. I found myself at 

 length my own severest critic. Whether from the 

 continuing force of the " good old stuff," which had 

 laid the bets as heavily as the manure upon that 

 part of the field, or whether the fact of the mere 

 germination of a turnip-seed where it had never 

 shown its delicate First-leaf before, was triumph 

 enough, it is hard to say ; but somehow or other it 

 was the fashion to semi-dignify with the title of a 

 "fair little crop" even those five acres which so 

 wretchedly disappointed my own expectations. As 

 for the crop where the guano was sown, it went off 

 from the first sub silentio: it was stared at and 



