ESSEX SOCIETY. 57 



They may be planted on ridges, four feet apart, in double 

 rows, and the intermediate spaces may be sowed with turnips. 

 It is a very good way, however, to put them in single rows, 

 twenty-seven inches apart. Like the wurtzel, they are a more 

 exhausting crop than any kind of turnip — but, unlike every 

 kind of turnip, are always free from destructive insects. The 

 land should be mellow, ploughed deep, and manured well, both 

 fall and spring, though this is not indispensable. 



Onions. — It is unnecessary, since the Essay on this subject, 

 by the President of the Society, to say much about the onion. 

 Unlike almost every other root, it does best by being continued 

 on the same ground. A gentleman writing in the (old) New 

 England Farmer, says he is now raising a fine crop of onions 

 on a piece of land where they have been sown for eighty suc- 

 cessive years, as nearly as he can determine. This fact is an 

 important one, because, when the ground is once clear of 

 weeds, it is much easier to keep it so than to clear a new 

 piece. 



Many a piece of ground has been abandoned for onion rais- 

 ing, just because they did not seem to do well on the first trial. 

 But it has been quaintly remarked by observing farmers, that 

 almost any rich land will bear onions after it gets used to them, 

 and there is a good deal in it. 



Turnips. — Inducements to cultivate them. No such malady 

 as has prevailed among potatoes, has ever yet assailed the tur- 

 nip. It is, indeed, subject to insect ravages, but these are open 

 and palpable, and can be detected so early in the season, that 

 means may be taken for ridding the plant of them ; and, if in- 

 efiectual, the crop may be ploughed in, and something else 

 done with the land the same year. But the labor of growing 

 an acre of turnips is less than one of potatoes or of corn, while 

 the produce is double. I went on to an half acre of land 

 which had been ploughed, with one hand, on the 26th of 

 last May. With the horse, and cultivator spread wide, and one 

 tooth only on each side, we furrowed the land, sowed the seed 

 by hand, and covered it with a common hay rake, using some- 

 times the teeth and sometimes the head, in little more than 

 half a day. To have planted with potatoes must have taken 

 8 



