58 ESSEX SOCIETY. 



longer. With a seed-sower it could have been done quicker, 

 and probably better, I have stated the fact, however, so that 

 none may be deterred from raising root crops on account of the 

 labor. As to the subsequent labor, the ploughing between the 

 rows is the same as among potatoes, of course — thinning and 

 transplanting are extra, it is true, but if very thick you obtain 

 some fodder, or if the plants be left on the ground, some ma- 

 nure. The hoeing is about the same as hoeing other crops, — 

 and in harvesting, by help of the plough run along side of the 

 rows, it is obvious that the same quantity could be gathered in 

 far less time. I have referred to the French turnip, in the 

 above remarks, — a name, however, which has almost entirely 

 disappeared from the books and agricultural papers, Swedish 

 turnips being almost the only thing of the kind now talked of. 



They suffer less from frost — Turnips can be left safely in 

 the ground till all other crops are gathered in. The ground 

 may freeze quite hard without serious injury to the crop ; and 

 then they may be kept in a cellar entirely too cold for any 

 iOlher roots. 



They will keep late in the spring, if kept cold. The English 

 turnip grows corky, but the French and Swedish do not. 



Swine will grow and fatten on them. — Judge Buel said that 

 his neighbor Bement, of Albany, kept twenty hogs, mostly full 

 grown breeders, from the 1st of November to the loth of Feb- 

 ruary, in the winter of 1838 and '39, upon ruta baga and buck- 

 wheat bran, giving them six bushels of roots and one of bran 

 each day, at three feedings — two of the feedings being on raw 

 roots, and one on boiled. " When he began to feed with the 

 roots, the hogs were low in flesh ; at the termination of the 

 three and a half months, they were too thrifty for breeding, 

 and some of them fit for the butcher. The owner estimated 

 that four quarts of corn to each hog per day, for all that time, 

 would not have brought them into a better condition than did 

 the turnips and bran." The corn, at seventy cents per bushel, 

 would be worth one dollar and seventy-five cents per day. 

 The six bushels of roots, at twenty-five cents per bushel, would 

 be worth but one dollar and fifty cents. The bushel of bran 

 would cost but a trifle, of course. But suppose the expense were 



