736 MASS. BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



Brewer, the member of this Board from Hampden, is well 

 founded. It therefore becomes material to ascertain their 

 comparative value as feed for stock. That they can be advan- 

 tageously used, in connection with hay and other feed, there 

 is no doubt. The Swedish turnip, ruta-bag-a, as it is called, is 

 the variety that finds most favor. The common round turnip 

 is often grown, yielding six or seven hundred bushels to the 

 acre, planted as late as July, after a crop of grass has been 

 taken from the land. No easier provision can be made to 

 meet the wants arising from a short crop of hay. Unless, as 

 in the present season, the mildness of the first half of winter 

 shall atone for the deficiency of the crop of the preceding 

 summer. 



BEETS. 



The beet, in its several varieties, is much praised, and often 

 recommended as worthy of cultivation. I have known in 

 Newbury fine crops of 1,500 bushels, or thirty tons to the acre. 

 Notwithstanding the abundance of the crop and the admitted 

 nutritive and palatable qualities of the plant, I have rarely 

 known its cultivation continued for many years. Those who 

 have grown beets a few years narrow the limits of their culti- 

 vation. Accurate experiments, continued for a series of weeks, 

 have demonstrated that cattle fed on beets gain twice as much 

 as when fed on the same quantity of turnips, and more than 

 when fed on carrots. Hence, the inference would be in favor 

 of the beet. But there may be some other consideration to 

 counterbalance this inference. The beet is a great exhauster 

 of the soil, and does not grow well several years sucessively 

 on the same soil. It is a poor preparative for any other crop. 

 I have often heard, as a reason assigned for an indifferent crop, 

 that beets were grown on the land the year preceding. No 

 grower of onions, for instance, would presume to plant after 

 beets, until some regenerating process "had been applied, 

 such as a green crop of oats turned in, in the autumn, or a 

 crop of corn or potatoes, with a liberal dressing of manure. 

 Perhaps this exhausting of the nutritive elements of the soil 

 explains in part why beets are so rarely cultivated to any con- 

 siderable extent as food for stock. 



Some have thought that a valuable supply of green food for 



