

CULTIVATION OF PLANTS. 159 



are in clusters, attached to the roots of the plant. As com- 

 pared with the tubers of the potato, they are watery, and in- 

 ferior in nutritive properties. Still it is considered valuable 

 for feeding hogs and other animals; the tubers are generally 

 eaten with great eagerness. This plant is in a peculiar man- 

 ner fitted to grow under the shade. 



The yield is frequently very large about five hundred 

 bushels per acre having been produced without manure. The 

 "Complete Practical Farmer," page 145, says, that one culti- 

 vator obtained between seventy and eighty tons of this root; 

 and expresses an opinion that three acres devoted to this cul- 

 ture will keep one hundred swine for six months. It is a cer- 

 tain crop and suffers little if any from frost. Taking therefore 

 into account the hardy qualities of this plant its productive- 

 ness and easy culture it may be doubted whether it merits 

 the almost universal neglect into which it has fallen. Grant- 

 ing its inferiority as an article of food to the plants now culti- 

 vated for our domestic stock, it must be of some importance 

 to retain among us, a plant that can be so easily raised, and on 

 soils so low in the scale of fertility. 



