SUCCULENT ROOTS, 241 



is to mix them with fine sand in the proportion of one 

 bushel to every four or five pounds of seeds this 

 mixture is then laid in heaps, being occasionally 

 watered and turned during two or three weeks previous 

 to sowing. The above preliminary process not only 

 occasions the more equal diffusHh of the seeds, but 

 likewise promotes their quicker germination; besides 

 this, when they are sown alone their extreme levity 

 causes great inconvenience, and prevents this opera- 

 tion from being successfully performed except in the 

 calmest weather. The ground being duly manured, 

 and reduced to the required degree of fineness, the 

 seed mixed with the sand is sown about the middle of 

 March or beginning of April : the seeds thus prepared 

 germinate and send up young plants before the ap- 

 pearance of the annual weeds, which are always abun- 

 dant in a soil so worked and manured. In about five 

 or six weeks the plants are in a fit state for hoeing, and 

 that operation two or three times repeated, according 

 to the increase of the weeds, is all the after-culture 

 which is requisite. 



From this manner of sowing, more than eight 

 hundred bushels per acre of carrots of very large 

 growth have been obtained. According to Mr 

 Arthur Young, the produce of these roots on indifferent 

 land is about two hundred bushels, and on a more 

 congenial soil six hundred and forty bushels per acre. 

 The garden culture of carrots is somewhat different. 

 In that case they are sown in a succession of crops 

 from the latter end of February to the beginning of 

 August, and the plants when hoed are thinned at 

 regular distances, of from five to eight inches apart, 

 the particular interval being regulated by the size of 

 the variety under cultivation, and by the period of 

 their growth at which they are to be drawn. 



In order to preserve carrots for winter use, they are 

 dug up in the beginning of November, and placed in 

 VOL. xv. 21 



