168 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



But is seems to us that the true value of the ruta-baga or 

 Swedish turnip is not yet fully known among us. It is to a 

 very considerable degree a substitute for the potato, which 

 formerly gave an ample reward for a small outlay of land, 

 labor, and capital, but which has now become one of the most 

 uncertain of all field-crops. It furnishes excellent food for 

 man as well as animals, can be cultivated at a very small 

 expense, and is admirably adapted to much of the light soil of 

 the county. It grows with great luxuriance on new land. It 

 may be sown late in June, after other crops have had one hoe- 

 ing, and just before the busy season of haying begins, — in fact, 

 Swedes for winter store should not be sown earlier. Tlie crop 

 may be easily managed with the horse-cultivator ; and, inas- 

 much as it will bear rough usage in early life with impunity, it 

 can be thinned with great rapidity with the common hoe — facts' 

 worthy of consideration in the present scarcity and expense of 

 labor. 



The value of the turnip in English husbandry is so well 

 known, that it need only be referred to. A desire to imjjress 

 its value upon the minds of farmers here, induces us to enter 

 into a somewhat extended notice of it, rather than the expecta- 

 tion of presenting any thing new. 



The cultivation of the turnip as a field-crop, although known 

 to the ancients, and carried on with great care in Holland for 

 many centuries, was unknown in England till its introduction 

 into Norfolk by Lord Townshend, about the middle of the last 

 century. Since that time it has been pursued with great indus- 

 try and skill, until the best varieties are found in that counti-y. 

 The time may arrive when the seed of the root raised in this 

 country will be as good as that raised in England ; but it is not 

 so now. It may be some defect in our cultivation which causes 

 the degeneration of the plant here ; biit that this degeneration 

 does take place there is abundant evidence. Possibly our soil 

 is not in condition to develop the root thoroughly ; the fact that 

 Swedes exhaust our new soil, would in some degree indicate 

 this. And yet it is said of the turnip crop — " it is indeed the 

 sheet-anchor of light soil cultivation, and the basis of the alter- 

 nate system of English husbandry, to which every class of the 

 community is much indebted." 



