194 AMERICAN HUSBANDRY. 



ferred alike by the horse, the ox, the coav, the sheep, 

 and the hog to every other root, with perhaps the 

 exception of the parsnip ; and cooked, it is only in- 

 ferior to the most farinaceous kinds of the potato. 

 It makes the finest wool, the most juicy and delicate 

 meat, the largest quantity and richest quality of milk 

 and butter in winter, not inferior to that produced 

 from the sweetest pastures in summer. When not 

 grown too large, it also ranks high among table edi- 

 bles ; and is perhaps the most luscious and palatable 

 of roots to the taste of man. Being then the largest 

 of yielders, the most certain of crops, the easiest 

 handled, secured, and fed, and, above all, a great 

 ameliorater of the soil on which it is grown, we 

 think we are not over sanguine when we assert 

 that, in a very few years, its cultivation will become 

 so extended as to make it the largest and most val- 

 uable of our root productions, and that it will work 

 out in the United States even a greater wealth and 

 independence to the agriculturist than the growing 

 of turnips has in England. 



Of the probability of the beet rivalling the cane in 

 the production of sugar, we shall speak in a future 

 number : it is sufficient in this to know that, as food 

 for man and beast, it deserves paramount attention, 

 and it is to be hoped that all those who have en- 

 gaged in its cultivation will endeavour to extend the 

 knowledge and practice of it as much as possible in 

 their respective neighbourhoods. With a view of 

 adding his mite to so desirable an object, the writer 

 subjoins below such information as lais limited ex- 

 perience enables him to give. 



Soil and its preparation. — The best soil for the pro- 

 duction of the sugar-beet is a deep, light, and mod- 

 erately rich loam, resting on a clay subsoil ; but 

 very large crops have been taken from thin gravels 

 and sands, and the hardest clay ; in these cases, 

 however, they had undergone a potato cropping and 

 manuring the preceding year, and had received a 



