106 



After the time mentioned, the experiments of which these 

 formed a part were brought to an abrupt conclusion. 



But as regards the proof in the case of mangels, it fortunately 

 happens that a friend of ours has within the last five years occu- 

 pied himself with the same set of experiments that the 

 enlightened authorities of the Eoyal Agricultural College so 

 ruthlessly brought to a termination some seventeen years since. 



Every one knows the Beta maritima, the wild beet, so common 

 to our seashores ; it is usually figured with a thick fleshy 

 root; it is so drawn in English Botany, vol. viii., fig. 

 1184, this being a copy of previous figures. The same figure is 

 recently copied in Bentham's Illustrated Hand Book of the British 

 Flora. We mention this because we have never seen truly wild 

 examples of beet but what have been extremely digitated with 

 long, fleshy, flexile, forked roots, having but little about it to in- 

 dicate the fine forms which, by cultivation, the beets and man- 

 gels as crop plants are made to assume. 



But besides this tendency in the wild plant to excessive 

 f orkiness in the root, it also grows many heads or crowns. If, 

 therefore, our readers will contrast this state of things with a 

 refined mangel which is absolutely free from forkiness in the 

 root, which latter is large, round, and smooth, with a skin as 

 smooth and delicate as that of a lady, and instead of presenting 

 us with a divided head, this portion of a well-bred mangel is 

 reduced to a single bud, the leaveo of which are small and 

 delicate, and not at all the rough objects we see in the wild plant. 



Our woodcut has been executed by Mr. Worthington Smith 

 from a series of drawings which were made by us from original 

 specimens, and may serve to represent the progress made in the 

 formation of mangel wurtzel from wild beet. The drawings are 

 eight in number, and all of them are about half the size of the 

 original roots. 



The series of figures represent roots respectively of the first 

 year, of a second year's plant, in which the upper part is approach- 

 ing the thickness of a bulb, and of the third year, all having 



