DISEASES OF SHEEP. 163 



with some vegetables in winter, as beino; necessary alike in a medici 

 nal point of view, and as tending to increase the quantity of milk 

 Or if vegetables, either turnips, potatoes, or sngar-beets, have not, or 

 cannot be provided, then the season of ypaning, a matter always 

 under the control of the sheep-master, should be postponed until the 

 rye lots, sowed with express reference to this subject, may afford the 

 best pasture, or at all events, in the absence of that provision, until 

 the grass has " taken a start." And herein Great Britain may well 

 boast her eminent advantage over us; one that with a view to sheep 

 yet more than to cattle husbandry, more than counterbalances the 

 great boon of Providence to these United States, Indian corn. If the 

 political economist were called upon to inoicate the broadest basis 

 and most fruitful source of English wealth and population, he might 

 probably designate the inirududion of turnip culture. 



Lord Townshend, in the reign of George III., having accompanied 

 that monarch to Hanover, there saw turnips cultivated in open fields, 

 as fodder for cattle, brought home the seed, and in spite of the ridicule 

 Mhich was cast upon the undertaking, he succeeded in persuading 

 some of his tenants to plant them, and thus it happened that the 

 heaths and wastes of Norfolk, that might have to this day remained 

 in their original barrenness, were converted into magnificent vegetable 

 and grain fields. Fed oiT to sheep that are folded to consume the 

 turnip on the ground, the land is at once cleared of weeds, and highly 

 manured, so that the original value of the turnip as fodder, great as 

 that is, does not equal the resulting benefits in the preparation of the 

 soil for heavy crops of grain. Thus the old system of fallowing has 

 been superseded, and, as has been eloquently said by an English 

 writer, " Mighty nature renews her strength, not by indolent repose, 

 *'H in alterations of energy." 



Considering how lately, and, as it were, accidentally this vegetable 

 /vas introduced into England, it is marvellous to witness its progress 

 md effects. From being cultivated only in gardens for cattle, as late 

 as the beginning of the eighteenth century, Colquhoun, in his statis- 

 tical researches, estimates their value at fourteen millions of pounds 

 sterling; and two years since, a respectable writer puts it down as 

 being equal to the interest of the national debt. It was in view of 

 snch^facts that our enlightened and eminent fellow citizen, Nicholas 

 Biddle, so well qualified by liberal education, various attainments, 

 and philosophic turn of mind, to speak with wisdom and force on all 

 useful subjects, was prompted to remark in one of his luminous dis- 

 courses on agriculture — '"It is strange how things so lowly acquire 

 national importance; the best farming is that which will give tho 

 irreatest mass of sustenance to animals, since the less land required 

 for animals, the more can be given to the maintenance of human be- 

 m'J's. That fine farming n^gion of England had reached tiie limit of 

 fjuppornnsr animals; it has more than doubled or quadrupled its 

 power In that respect; and now, odd as the mingling of such dissi- 

 milar notions may seem, it is scarctly an exaggeration to say, that 



