ESSEX SOCIETY. 61 



Manure. — Any manure almost will answer for the French 

 or Swedish turnip. Upon the half acre referred to, which is an 

 island in Essex River, called Dilley Island, I spread rockwced 

 and other sea stuff, such as is washed up by the tide. This 

 was the only kind of manure that had for previous years been 

 used. Probably the plants derived their support from the rot- 

 ten manure of the last year. 



Quantity of Seed. — One pound of good, is sufficient for an 

 acre. This will cost, at the seed-store, about seventy-five 

 cents. 



Preparation of the ground. — If the soil has dog-grass in it, 

 the rows should be made across the furrows — that is, should 

 run across the furrows made in ploughing the field, and these 

 rows should be made, not with cultivator teeth, but with a pair 

 of oxen or horses, and a plough large enough to go through the 

 dog-grass turf, and then mellow soil hoed in to fill these cross- 

 furrows, so that the plants may have a free soil to work in. And 

 one excellent effect of a French turnip crop upon dog-grass is, 

 to shade, and smother, and extirpate that foul weed. 



Since the potato has been suffering from the inscrutable dis- 

 ease which has prevailed so fearfully, French turnips have 

 come in as a tolerable substitute for the table. A farmer in 

 Essex, who raised them among his corn, sold them at fifty 

 cents per bushel, for cash, at Gloucester market. 



The cultivation of roots crops is receiving increased atten- 

 tion, and in some departments of it the products bid fair to ex- 

 ceed in value almost every other product of the garden or field. 

 Three hundred acres of the best land in Danvers are devoted 

 to the onion. It is painful to learn, as we do from Mr. Proc- 

 tor's letter, appended to this report, that there has, this year, 

 been a comparative failure. Had an average crop been ob- 

 tained, of 400 bushels to the acre, the yield in that town would 

 have been 120,000 bushels. The Indian corn crop, in Danvers, 

 a few years since, was valued by the town assessors, at $8357 

 only, while the onions, this year, at fifty cents a bushel, with 

 the success which has generally attended, would have been 

 worth $60,000. This is nearly twice the value of all the En- 

 glish and other hay raised in the same town in the year 1844. 



