30 



NEW ENGLAND FARMER. 



Jan. 



way for corn-crops on wastes that had previously 

 been given up to the rabbits." 



Under this system, a Mr. Rodwell made the 

 produce of 820 acres of land worth one hundred 

 andjifty thousand dollars more in twenty-eight 

 years, than his predecessor did in the same time, 

 under the old system, without roots. This great 

 advance in arable fai'ming took its rise in the 

 county of Norfolk. Again — 



"Turnips, which are said by Young to have 

 been brought into farm cultivation by the cele- 

 brated Jethro Tull, found such a zealous advo- 

 cate in LordTownshend, that he got the name of 

 'Turnip Townshend.' Pope speaks of 'all Towns- 

 hend's turnips,' in one of his imitations of Hor- 

 ace, published in 1737. This crop he had the 

 sagacity to see was the parent of all the future 

 crops. Without winter food little stock could 

 be kept, without stock there could be little man- 

 ure, and with little manure there could not be 

 much of anything else. The turnips were, there- 

 fore, employed to secure a large dung-heap, and 

 the dung-heap in turn was mainly appropriated 

 to securing the largest possible store of turnips. 

 This tillage in a circle was as productive as it 

 was simple. The ground, cleaned and enriched 

 by the root-crops, afterwards yielded abundant 

 harvests of corn ; and as we have already stated, 

 the treading of the sheep u])on the loose soil, 

 while they fed off a portion of the turnips, gave 

 it the necessary firmness. Thus through the 

 agency of turnips a full fold and a full bullock- 

 yard made a full granary. Essex and Suffolk 

 soon copied the method, but they did not carry 

 it so far as in Norfolk ; and in many places the 

 turnips were never thinned or hoed, upon which 

 their size and consequently nearly all their value 

 depended." 



With a single extract more we will leave this 

 highly interesting and instructive article, hoping 

 at a future time to show equally as decided testi- 

 niony in favor of root culture, in the practice of 

 our own people. 



"In the old days distance operated as a bar- 

 rier to imitation, and three-fourths of England 

 only heard of what was done in the well-cultivat- 

 ed fourth to ridicule and despise it. When the 

 father of Mr. George Turner, of Barton, Devon, 

 the well-known breeder of Devon cattle and of 

 Leicester sheep, who had learned something in 

 his visits with stock to llolkham, began to drill 

 turnips, a well-to-do neighbor looked down from 

 the dividing bank and said to his son, 'I suppose 

 your father will be sowing pepper out of a cruet 

 next.' Lideed, the whole history of the turnip 

 cultivation affords a characterisiic contrast be- 

 tween the spirit of the past and the present. It 

 took upwards of a century to establish the proper 

 growth of this crop, notwithstanding that the 

 wealth of meat and corn which proceeded from it 

 was as plain to those who would open their eyes as 

 that a guinea was worth one-and-twenty-shillings. 

 The first difficulty was to persuade farmers to 

 try it at all ; and not one turnip was ever seen 

 on a field in Northumberland till between 1760 

 and 1770. The second difficulty was to get them 

 to be at the expense of hoeing, insomuch that 



Young said that he should be heard with incre- 

 dulity in most counties when he bore testimony 

 to the vast benefits which were derived in Nor- 

 folk from this indispensable portion of the ])ro- 

 cess. The third difficulty was to induce tiiem to 

 replace broadcast sowing by drilling, which ap- 

 peared, as we see, to novices no less ridiculous 

 than peppering the land from a cruet. The big- 

 otry of the farmer cramped the energies of the 

 mechanics whom he now welcomes as among his 

 best friends. The implements, even by the first 

 manufacturers, from the absence of criticism and 

 competition, from the limited extent of custom, 

 and from the want of artisans skilled in work- 

 ing in iron, were, however excellent in idea, both 

 clumsy and costlj'. The choicest specimens which 

 existed in 1840 have been so altered in execu- 

 tion by cheaper materials and improved work- 

 manship that they can scarcely be recognized." 



With the aid of root crops, and that of machi- 

 nery in our labor, it is not difficult lo anticipate 

 the time when our farmers shall labor less, but 

 yet prosper more. The success of the steam- 

 plow on the beautiful and fertile prairies of the 

 West, almost makes real tlie expression in the 

 fine lines of Mr. Thackeray on the Great Exhibi- 

 tion in England in 1851. 



Look yonder where llie engines ton , 

 The Nation's arms of conquest are, 

 The trophies of her bloodless war ; 

 Brave weapons these. 

 Victorious over wave and soil, 

 With these she sails, she weaves, she tilLi, 

 Pierces the everlasting hills 



And spans the seas. 



Far tfte New England Farmer. 

 IO"WA— ITS CLIMATE AISTD CROPS. 



We must be somewhere about mid-way be- 

 tween the extremes of dryness and wetness men- 

 tioned by Prof. Brocklesby, in his work on mett 

 orology. So rare is the occurrence of a real 

 shower at Lima, in Peru, that it is a source of 

 terror ; and when such an event happens, relig- 

 ious ju'ocessions parade the streets, imploring 

 the protection of heaven for their endangered 

 city. In the interior of Guiana, on the other 

 hand, the sun and stars are seldom visible, and 

 the rains not unfrequently continue for five or 

 six months, with scarcely any intermission. 



For the last four weeks, we have had veiy 

 nearly the same kind of weather as prevails on 

 the Isle of Chiloe, (43° S. lat.,) where "it rains 

 six days of the week, and is cloudy on the 

 seventh." 



Early in October we had a sharp frost for two 

 or three nights. For more than a month we 

 have had none ; but almost incessant rainy and 

 cloudy weather, with some snow. I picked to- 

 matoes from my vines yesterday, (Nov. 11th,) as 

 fresh as in September. Many seeds germinated, 

 and currant bushes and apple trees started anew 

 in October. To-day, (12th,) it has snowed stead- 

 ily without any prospect of fair weather for some 

 time to come. 



Farmers are about discouraged. In addition 

 to the failure of the wheat, oats and potatoes, we 



