1859. 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



!20 



duce as an agricultural crop. It is not possible 

 to judge of many, from the result of tvv'o or three 

 trials only. Because, although oftentiuies we 

 may be quite right in the view we take of our 

 first experiments, yet it Vvill frequently occur that 

 until by repeated trials we become by experience 

 ■well acquainted with the constitution of a new 

 plant, we may attribute our success or our failure 

 to causes which, in fact, had nothing to do with 

 either. And therefore we may so be led into er- 

 ror which further experiment would dispel. 



That this is so, will be evident to any one who 

 is familiar with the vast changes that have taken 

 place within the last few years in the cultivation 

 of fruits and vegetables. Many crops that some 

 years back were considered to require years (es- 

 pecially in fi'uits,) of previous care of the plants 

 to produce them, are now produced in less than 

 one. And this with things that have been famil- 

 iar to the gardener for above an hundred years. 



In fact, the agriculturist no less than the hor- 

 ticulturist, who would prosecute his calling with 

 due reference to the guidance of scientific princi- 

 ples, will never assume that he has arrived at a 

 knowledge of the best mode of cultivating any 

 crop. Whilst he will be cautious not to exper- 

 mentalize without due regard to prudence and to 

 principles, he will nevertheless be ever earnest in 

 the "forward" effort, and will take care that his 

 labors are as steadily directed by his judgment, as 

 his plow is by his hand. — American Farmer'' s Mag- 

 azine. 



THB IMPORTANCE OF ROOT CROPS. 



Several of our intelligent correspondents are 

 amusing themselves, in giving expression to their 

 views in relation to the value and importance of 

 root crops, in our farm economj*. Their opinions 

 — as the careful reader has undoubtedly observed 

 — are widely difi"erent. That they are sincere 

 opinions, we can have no doubt — and we have as 

 little doubt that there existed widely different 

 circumstances between the parties, which led to 

 the different conclusions to which they severally 

 arrived. 



For many years, our own opinions were unfa- 

 vorable to the culture of roots as feed for stock ; 

 but they were founded more upon the general 

 expression of those around us, than upon investi- 

 gation and actual production and use of them 

 under our own labor and supervision. When we 

 had gone through with these, we became con- 

 vinced that we v,ere in error, and that the "gen- 

 eral expression of opinion around us," to which 

 we have alluded, had no better basis than the 

 views we had entertained. 



The successful culture of roots requires more 

 plowing and harrowing, and preparation gener- 

 ally, than our corn or grain crops, and more care 

 in tending them after the seed is committed to 

 the ground. It is more delicate work — requir- 

 ing more thought and skill and more exactness 

 of arrangement, and all this is what farmers 

 generally have disliked, — and hence the opin- 



ion naturally enough grew up, that the culture 

 of beets, turnips, mangolds, &c. was unprofitable 

 as food for stock. 



The discussion of our correspondents has 

 prompted us to look again at some of the state- 

 ments made in regard to these crops, and we 

 find the highest testimony in their favor in abun- 

 dance, both at home and abroad. 



In the London Quarterly Review for April last, 

 is a long article reviewing five or six works upon 

 agricultural subjects, in which we find statements 

 having a direct bearing upon our subject. In 

 speaking of the condition of English agriculture 

 at the close of the eighteenth century, the writer 

 says : — 



"The greater number of breeds were large- 

 boned and ill-shaped, greedy eaters, and slow in 

 arriving at maturity ; while as very little ivinter 

 food, except hay, loas raised, the meat laid on by 

 grass in the summer was lost, or barely main- 

 tained, in winter. Fresh meat for six months of the 

 year was a luxury only enjoyed by the wealthiest 

 personages. Within the recollection of many now 

 living, first-class farmers in Herefordshire salted 

 down an old cow in the autumn, which, with 

 flitches of fat bacon, supplied their families with 

 meat until the spring. Esquire Bedel Gunning, 

 in his 'Memorials of Cambridge,' relates that 

 when Dr. Makepeace Thackeray settled in Ches- 

 ter, about the beginning of the present century, 

 he presented one of his tenants with a bull-calf 

 of a superior breed. On his inquiring after it in 

 the following spring, the farmer gratefully replied, 

 'Sir, he was a noble animal ; we killed him at 

 Christmas, and have lived upon him ever since.'" 



We have underscored the words "very little 

 winter food, except hay, icas raised," to show, as 

 one reason, why the cattle were worthy of the 

 description given them. 



After speaking at considerable length of the 

 changes effected in the breeds of cattle and sheep, 

 and the light thrown upon these subjects by the 

 investigations of Arthur Young, Cobbett, 

 Robert Bakewell, and others, the writer says : 



"But the fattening qualities and early maturity 

 of the improved stock would have been of little 

 value beyond the few rich grazing districts of the 

 Midland counties, without an addition to the sup- 

 ply of food. The best arable land of the king- 

 dom had been exhausted by long years of culti- 

 vation, and the barren fallow, which annually 

 absorbed one-third of the soil, failed to restore 

 its fertility. A new source of agricultural wealth 

 was discovered in turnips, which, as their impor- 

 tant qualities became known excited in many of 

 their early cultivators much the same sort of en- 

 thusiasm as they did in Lord Monboddo, who on 

 returning home from a circuit, went to look at a 

 field of them by candle-light. Turnips answered 

 the purpose of a fallow crop which cleaned and 

 rested old arable land ; turnips were food foi 

 fattening cattle in winter ; turnips, grown on 

 light land, and afterwards eaten down by sheep 

 which consolidated it by their feet, prepared the 



