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them ripe : l)iit are only safe in a very dry season, in a wet 

 season foiling to bottom down, and giving a large crop of seal- 

 lions. Mr. Rolfe lias a noble ambition as a farmer, and aims 

 yet to raise his thousand bushels of merchantable onions to 

 the acre ; but I would not advise him to run this strain of on- 

 ions ; his land is a clay loam, having a sandy sub-soil . I think 

 that a Avct season would be more apt to give scallions on such 

 a soil with this strain than a crop of marketable bulbs. The 

 tops of this crop were two and a half to three and a half feet 

 in length, measured as they lay in a dense, dr}^ mass, almost 

 covering the ground, Xoav every onion grower knows Avhat 

 would have happened with onions having such tremendous 

 tops, had the season proved a wet one towards its close instead 

 of remarkably dry. To ascertain the quantity of the half acre 

 three rows were taken, the middle row and one at each end. 

 These were pulled and topped on the ground, and then Avcigh- 

 ed ; and the yield as thus determined Avas at the rate of one 

 thousand and ninety bushels to the acre. As the crop was 

 somewhat green, the onions not being very hard, though the 

 neck:; were well dried down, the Committee arranged with INIr. 

 Kolfe to receive a report from him of the actual AveigLt of the 

 crop Avhen marketed. It Avill be seen by the report of ]Mr. 

 Rolfe that the yield of the crop was 970 bushels to the acre. 

 This is a remarkable crop, worth a journey of thirty miles to 

 see. With Mr. Rolfe's figures of the cost of his crop I nearly 

 agree, but shall put the cost of cultivation a little higher. I 

 find Holbrook's Double Wheel Hoe quite an improvement on 

 the common wheel hoe. It can be run much nearer to the 

 growing crop, and thus saves a great deal of hand weeding. 



The members of the committee who visited the onion crop 

 of Mr. Noyes of Middleton foimd it to be of superior quality, 

 the onions being of excellent size for market, very hard and 

 well ripened, necks small, with not a pocketful of scallions on 

 the half acre. To determine the amount of the crop, three 

 rows were taken, one at each end of the half acre and one in 

 the middle : these were pulled, topped and carefully Aveighed,, 



T . 



