IMPEOVED STEAINS OF EOOTS 51 



No less importance attaches to a mangel of similar shape and 

 colour but of a different origin. It is the Oval-shaped Yellow, 

 or Yellow Intermediate, from Peter Lawson and Son, Edinburgh, 

 a celebrated old firm founded in 1770. 1 Probably this is a very 

 old English or Scotch variety, cultivated in Great Britain as 

 early as 1812 as " Intermediate-shaped Yellow," or tankard- 

 shaped, but giving many roots of oval shape. From these 

 latter the Oval-shaped Yellow was probably produced by 

 selection. It seems to have been fairly well known in Denmark 

 in the seventies, and was shown at exhibitions in 1878 and 1880. 

 About the year 1880 Chr. P. Jacobsen, of the firm Markfr0kon- 

 toret, now Trifolium, obtained samples of this and other 

 varieties from Lawson and from other firms, as the firm intended 

 to grow seeds of roots for sale. Of all the samples tried Jacobsen 

 selected Lawson' s Oval- shaped Yellow as the most suitable, and 

 in 1885 he offered seed of his own growing from this English or 

 Scottish mangel. 



There were several other tankard- or oval-shaped yellow 

 mangels at the Danish Exhibition in 1878, among them several 

 German varieties. As they were all very much alike in appear- 

 ance, and as Danish botanists thought it unnecessary and con- 

 fusing to have different names for what was botanieally the 

 same variety, all these oval or half-long yellow mangels became 

 gradually known under the common name of Barres. The 

 Lawson Barres and the Vilmorin Barres, represented by the 

 seed grown by Jacobsen and at the Eoyal Agricultural College 

 respectively, were, however, recognised as distinct, and generally 

 named after their introducers, Markfr0kontoret and the Koyal 

 Agricultural College. After protracted and severe competitions 

 between these two kinds of Barres it seems that strains of the 

 Lawson Barres are now ousting the Vilmorin and indeed all 

 other mangels from the Danish fields. 



One other kind of mangel of the more or less oval yellow 

 variety, and therefore in Denmark called Barres, was un- 

 doubtedly derived from English stock, although it has not been 

 possible to trace it back to the firm in Great Britain from which 



1 The firm is by some supposed to have been founded by a Dane of the name 

 of Larsen, who "scotched" his name to Lawson (Tidsskrift for Planteavl, 

 19 vol., 1912, p. 78). 



