OCTOBER. 543 



oxen, and in feeding stock swine. Sows that have 

 pigs m ay be kept on them, for they breed much 

 milk.. Cows eat them greedily, and they give no ill 

 taste to the milk, cream, or butter. Their use, in 

 short, is universal ; you can cultivate no plant that 

 will answer more purposes. 



PLOUGH UP POTATOES. 

 There is not the same reason for digging up this 

 crop as for carrots: the plough among the latter is 

 apt to cut, break, and bury them ; but not so with 

 potatoes, for it turns them over, damaging scarcely 

 any. First, let a number of women, preceded by 

 a cart, pull up the tops, and throw the potatoes 

 that adhere to them into baskets, and the stalks 

 into the cart, which should convey them to the 

 hog-yards, where they will presently be trampled 

 into dung: then each plough taking its ground, 

 attended by six or eight women, or more, if the. 

 crop is very large, each with a basket, divide the 

 furrow, by setting up white sticks into as many 

 parts as there are women, that each may pick tier 

 own share ; a range of bushel skeps, at a. small 

 distance, for the baskets being emptied, and three 

 or four carts ready for men (who do nothing el^e). 

 one to eight or ten women, to take the skeps to 

 the carts. The furrow being picked, I used, many 

 years ago, to work it by men with three-pronged 

 forks, each with a woman, or a boy, to pick up 

 the roots; but finding this expensive, I contrived 

 a (Jiagonal harrow in a shim beam, with two or 



three 



