Feb. 22, 1832. 



AND HOUTICULTUIIAL JOURNAL. 



2.53 



oT the way. lam not a particular advocate for 

 plpugliiiig at that season. It made about five and 

 a lialf acres, out of upwards tliirtyfive wliicli I 

 ploughed, chiefly myself, that year. I hauled 

 upon four and a quarter acres of it, thirtythree 

 large cart-loads of sea-weed and rock-weed. I 

 learn from your paper, (to show the difference 

 of noin:?nclature at so short a distance,) that sea- 

 weed in the vicinity of Bostou, means eel-grass, 

 — here, it means kelp. This shows the impor- 

 tance of terms, to understand one another. Most 

 of this was put on before ploughing. I was una- 

 ble to discover much differeuce in the crop of 

 corn, where it was laid on, afterwards. I say this 

 as an acknowledgment to be fair with every body ; 

 as I am an advocate for all manures being plough- 

 ed in at all times. This patch was ploughed 

 nearly as I should wish to break up gravelly loam, 

 but not quite ; it just touched the sub-soil ; 1 

 should prefer turning a little of it on the top, if 

 ploughed in the autumn. I intended to have laid 

 on eight loads of sea-manure to each acre; but 

 had no time to haul more ; and one and a quarter 

 acres was left, on which I laid large loads of 

 slaughter-house manure in the spring. I planted 

 the sea-weed part with Indian corn, which I also 

 dunged in the holes. On this subject I have this 

 opinion. The season of 1 830 I believe corn was 

 the better for it. That of 1831, I am inclined to 

 believe it leally did as much harm as good, and 

 was a total loss of labor and manure ; forcing the 

 ears forward before their time. The remaining 

 one acre and a quarter I sowed with mangel 

 wurtzel seed, the beginning of May, in rows, and 

 it was done with extreme rapidity. I have always 

 had a high opinion of this root, and have now; 

 and it is stated by all writers, to be less liable to 

 the fly than the Swedish turnip. But now for 

 the facts : — The whole of them were destroyed, 

 totally, by some fly or bug, except a few plants, 

 which did not do extraordinaiily well after all ; 

 and on the 1st of July, I ploughed it lightly over 

 agrtin, with its weeds, and sowed it to the turnip, 

 broad-cast, as a waste crop. The turnips came 

 up beautifully, but the weeds still better ; and be- 

 iiia determined to see the issue, I set one of the 

 •neii to weed it by hand. He began at one end 

 and went on to the other ; biit by the time he had 

 got a third part of the way, it was too late. When 

 I sow the turnip again, I shall sow it the 1st of 

 June and hoe it regularly. From the one-third 

 of an acre which was saved, though sowed broad- 

 cast, I got at least, two hundred bushels ; and I 

 do not believe that the same land, with the same 

 culture, would have produced more than fifty of 

 potatoes. It had onit rather more than one load 

 of slaughter-house stuff, and no other manure. 



As to the value of the turnip, as a crop, I agree 

 with Mr J. B. as to his inference ; so far as that, 

 I think it deserves a place as our third crop, with 

 Indian corn and potatoes. But I wholly difl'er 

 from him as to his premises. I do not think a ton 

 of turnips contains half the nutriment of a ton of 

 potatoes ; nor a bushel, a third part of a bushel of 

 potatoes. But now for other considerations: — 

 The seed costs but little ; it is, however, said to be 

 of the highest importance that it should be of the 

 best sort, (I believe the seed I obtained of Mr 

 Russell, to be of that character.) The sowing 

 costs much less time at an important season ; the 

 hoeings, the same. It will grow much better tliau 

 the potato on sandy land; but do not let me be 

 understood to .say that it requires land less rich 



than the potato ; or that the potato will grow 

 best on stifi' land. It produces a great deal of 

 top, which may be fed in the field, and of which 

 all animals appear to be outrageously fond ; and 

 sheep are to an immense extent, 1 am told, fatten- 

 ed on the turnip in the field, without much trouble, 

 in various parts of England, and you get an im- 

 mensely large crop of the turnip then. To be 

 fair, again, however, I will state that my colts did 

 not like them ; and that though the cows gave a 

 great increase of milk, it was injured in taste ; as 

 also the butter, though of a beautiful color. The 

 turnip-husbandry, however, I take to rest on an- 

 other foundation, on which I shall explain my 

 notions. 



The true intrinsic value of a crop to a farmer, 

 is in the nutriment it contaius, and in the propor- 

 tion between the exhaustion of the soil and tnhat 

 it returns to it. For instance, on good land, when 

 it does not blight, you may get twenty bushels of 

 wheat off of an acre. We hear of much larger 

 cro])s, but this is a good crop, on any but the very 

 richest land, or with high cultivation. You get, 

 then, perhaps, two thousand pounds of grain and 

 straw oft" an acre, which can be returned to the 

 soil. This is the smallest proportion of manure 

 to exhaustion, we know of; and wheat is of 

 little intrinsic value to the fanner. The price has 

 nothing to do with th? intrinsic value ; wheat will 

 always command the best price for bread, and in 

 a new coimtry it best bears transportation, from 

 the proportion of its price to its bulk. 



On the same land, generally, you will get forty 

 bushels of Indian corn ; except, perhaps, that there 

 may be some difterence in the kind of land which 

 wheat prefers. On the sea-board, the propoition 

 of Indian corn to wheat, is greater ; even when 

 the wheat does not blight, you get then forty bush- 

 els of grain, nearly as nourishing as wheat and an 

 abundance of fodder; say 4500 lbs. of crop in all 

 off an acre, which is to go back; the soil being 

 no more exhausted than by the wheat, if it is as 

 much. Indian corn is then of far higher tn<n?isic 

 value to a farmer, as a crop, than wheat is. 



On the same land with the various deviations 

 from this rule, from the crops preferring particular 

 kinds of soils, you will get two hundred bushels 

 of potatoes. You will, here, get generally more in 

 proportion. The two hundred bushels of potatoes 

 will contain about as much nutriment, as the forty 

 of Indian corn with the fodder ; but not so good 

 in its nature for stock. There is no substitute for 

 grain. That the crop of potatoes will weigh on the 

 ground 14,000 lbs. or nearly that, the roots alone, 

 which is to go back ; and though it is my belief 

 that they exhaust the laud rather more than the 

 Indian corn, and that they are not so good for 

 stock, (for horses, though I have frequently fed 

 them on them, I do not like them for continuance,) 

 yet the return to the soil is so vastly greater, as to 

 more than bring up the difference. 



On the same land, you will get, barring the fly, 

 (of which I know nothing ; it is seen they let my 

 turnips go, and killed the beets, and which I forgot 

 to mention, for there was some turnip seed 

 among the beet seed, the fly or bug left the tur- 

 nip tvhen he took the beet ;) at least, 400 or 600 

 bushels of turnips. This crop with the tops, will 

 not more than equal the crop of ])Otatoes or the In- 

 dian corn in nourishment. I take care to claim 

 no more than I think the turnip deserves ; but I 

 think it better food than potatoes for them. But 

 now there is a great superiority in the return to 



the soil of the turnip, over the other crops. The 

 crop of turnips, all told, will weigh from 22,000 to 

 34,000 lbs. all of which is to go back, and though 

 it may exhaust the soil more than either of the 

 others, yet the manure brings up the difference ; 

 and they reduce the soil to a great state of fine- 

 ness. I do not pretend that there njay not be a 

 great difference in the quality of the manure, but 

 to take the extreme cases, it seems imiiossiblc that 

 the 30,000 lbs. of turnip crop should not return 

 more to the soil, than tlie 2000 lbs. of wheat crop. 

 The best use of the turnip crop seems to be the 

 feeding them off in the field,with fatting sheep; hurd- 

 ling them on what they can eat at a time. This 

 system, I am told, I read, I am led to believe, for I 

 knoiv nothing of English farming, is practised to 

 an immense extent in England ; the next crop 

 in rotation being clover. No doubt some of your 

 readers are able to inform us about it. Our cli- 

 mate prevents this being done to the same extent 

 as it is there done, in the winter. The turnip may 

 stand slight frosts, but it will not stand hard ones ; 

 as I know by experience. It is notorious that the 

 county of Norfolk, with the poorest and generally 

 sandiest and marshiest soil in England, has been 

 said to owe its great agricultural prosperity for the 

 last half century, to the turnip-husbandry ; per- 

 haps the claying of land and general intelligence 

 helped the matter. This was before the Swedish 

 turnip made its appearance in England, whether 

 it now supersedes the Enghsh there, I do not 

 know ; but I understand the Swedish turnip has 

 the very highest reputation in England. 



DISEASES IN HORSES. 



As to coughs in horses, though I earnestly beg 

 not to be understood to affect an extraordinary 

 knowledge of the subject, though I once made a 

 good deal of study of horses, and have always en- 

 deavored to expose the system of quackery which 

 infects the United States, as well as other coun- 

 tries on this subject, I can state that there are no 

 safe remedies for common coughs, but those used 

 for human subjects ; that for. tlfe distemper the horse 

 should neither be worked nor fed; that for chronic 

 coughs there is no cure, only palliatives, of 

 which bleeding is not one ; and that young horses 

 sometimes have coughs for a year, and yet entirely 

 recover from them. JOHN L. ELWYN. 



PRODUCTIVE PUMPKIN VINE. 



Mr Fessenden — After seeing your account of 

 Mr Whiting's Squash Vine, of Lancaster, Mass. 

 which produced 228 lbs. I endeavored to persuade 

 Mr J. Cook of this place, to report his crop of 

 pumpkins, but he declines, as I presume from 

 modesty, or from an apprehension that it would 

 not be credited. I am therefore induced to give 

 the information, as I received it from himself and 

 the mendjcrs of his family. 



The plant came up single, accidentally, among 

 his early potatoes, and as the potatoes were gather- 

 ed, occupied the whole space and continued to ex- 

 tend itself until the frost checked its growth, when 

 it contained, from the largest down to the size of 

 a lemon, upwards of one hundred and forty, (and 

 there were many more just set, with the blossom 

 unshed,) scventytwo of which were of good size 

 for use ; and twentytwo which were selected for 

 culinary purposes, weighed from 28 to 48 pounds. 

 It is to be regretted that they were not all weighed 

 and the length of the vine and branches measiaed, 

 which ran to an incredible length, and were pro- 

 ducing new sets faster and thicker, when the frost 



