24 CABBAGES, HOW TO GROW THEM, ETC. 



with impunity, or at least with but trifling injury from 

 that disease. This seems to prove, contrary to English 

 authority, that club-foot in the turnip tribe is the effect 

 of a dLTcrcnt cause from the same disease in the cab- 

 bage family. 



There is another position taken by Stephens in his 

 " Book of the Farm," which facts seem to disprove, 

 lie puts forth the theory that " all such diseases arise 

 from poverty of the soil, cither from want of manure 

 when the soil is naturally poor, or rendered effete by 

 over-cropping." There is a farm on a neck of land be- 

 longing to this town which lias peculiar advantages for 

 collecting sea kelp and sea moss, and these manures arc 

 there used most liberally, particularly for the cultivation 

 of cabbarc, from eight to twelve cords of rotton kelp, 

 which is stronger than barn manure and more suitable 

 food for cabbage, being used to tho acre. A few years 

 ago, on a change of tenants, the new incumbent heavily 

 manured a piece for cabbage and planted it -; but as the 

 season advanced stump foot developed in every cabbage 

 on one side of the piece, while all the remainder were 

 healthy. Upon inquiry he learned that by mistake he 

 had overlapped the cabbage plot of last season just so 

 far as the stump foot extended. In this instance it 

 could not have been that the cabbage suffered for want 

 of food, for not only was the piece heavily manured that 

 year and the year previous, but it had been liberally 

 manured through a scries of years, and to a large ex- 

 tent with the manure which of all others the cabbage 

 tribe delight in, rotten kelp and sea mosses. I have 

 known other instances where soil naturally quite strong 

 and kept heavily manured for a scries of years has 

 shown stump foot when cabbage were planted with inter- 

 vals of two and three years between. My theory is that 



