52 CARROTS, MANGOLDS AND SUGAR BEETS. 



thatching with straw and so piling that there shall be 

 a roof-like slant to the heap, with furnace-like ventilators 

 opening from it at intervals, I have never found necessary 

 in actual practice, the elevation of the earth above the 

 bed being a sufficieut water shed, while the cold nature of 

 the root prevents heating. Rats are the great enemies of 

 root pits. I have had galleries cut by these vermin through 

 a bed of roots, utterly destroying them for seed purposes. 

 The best way of killing them in my experience, has been to 

 drop a little arsenic on buttered bread and put it convenient- 

 ly near their holes, but so far hidden that no neighbors dog 

 would be likely to suffer by it. 



FEEDING THE CROP. 



Besides arguments which are of weight for cultivation of 

 all kind of roots, there are special ones for the raising of 

 Mangolds. The vast bulk of yield exceeds that of any 

 annual crop, as high as eighty tons of roots having been 

 raised to the acre on the sewerage farms of England, and 

 when to this is added the weight of leaves that such a crop 

 would carry, it will be safe to say that a hundred tons have 

 been given to the acre. Taken as a whole the Mangold has 

 less enemies and is less apt to fail than any other root. 

 Compared with the Turnip family, it has several marked ad- 

 vantages, being more reliable in dry seasons and less liable 

 to disease ; and in flesh-forming, heat-giving and fat-produc- 

 ing elements it surpasses it. While the Turnip family cannot 

 be raised repeatedly on the same land, indeed on most soil 

 can be raised only at intervals of three or four years, Man- 

 golds can be. raised many years in succession, as Mr. Mechi, 

 the distinguished English agriculturist, has proved by raising 

 sixty tons per annum on the same tract of land of six acres 

 area, for six successive years. They will keep longer in good 



