864 PRACTICE OF AGRICULTURE. Part III. 



5461. Carrots are taken up generally in the last week of October. Burrows's prac- 

 tice is to let the work to a man who engages women and children to assist him. The 

 work is performed with three-pronged forks ; the children cut off the tops, laying them 

 and the roots in separate heaps, ready for the teams to take away. 



5462. " I take up in autumn a sufficient quantity to have a store to last me out any considerable frost or 

 snow that may happen in the winter months ; the rest of the crop I leave in the ground, preferring thera 

 fresh out of the earth for both horses and bullocks. The carrots keep best in the ground, nor can the 

 severest frosts do them any material injury ; the first week in March it is necessary to have the remain- 

 ing part of the crop taken up, and the land cleared for barley. The carrots can either be laid in a heap 

 with a small quantity of straw over them, or they may be laidinto some empty outhouse or barn, in heaps 

 of many hundred bushels^ provided they are put together dry. This latter circumstance it is indispensably 

 necessary to attend to ; for if laid together in large heaps when wet, they will certainly sustain mucn injury. 

 When selecting such as I want to keep for the use of my horses until the months of May and June, in 

 drawing over the heaps (wliich should be done in the latter end of April, when the carrots begin to sprout 

 at the crown very fast) I throw aside the healthy and most perfect roots, and have their crowns cut com- 

 pletely off and laid by themselves ; by this means, carrots may be kept the month of June out in a high 

 state of perfection." {Commum'catlons to the Board of Agriculture, vol. vii. p. 72.) 



5463. Storing a whole crop of carrots may be a desirable practice when winter wheat is 

 to follow them, in which case the same mode may be adopted as for turnips or potatoes, 

 but with fewer precautions against the frost, as the carrot, if perfectly dry, is very little 

 injured by tliat description of weather. 



5464. The jjroditce of an acre of carrots in Suffolk, according to Arthur Young, is at 

 an average 350 bushels ; but Burrows's crops averaged upwards of 800 bushels per 

 acre, which considerably exceeds the largest crop of potatoes. 



5465. The uses to which the carrot is applied in Suffolk are various. Large quanti- 

 ties are sent to the LondKSfn markets, and also given as food to different kinds of live 

 stock. Horses are remarkably fond of carrots ; and it is even said, that when oats and 

 carrots axQ given together, the horses leave the oats and eat the carrots. The ordinary 

 allowance is about forty or fifty pounds a day to each horse. Carrots when mixed with 

 chaff, that is, cut straw, and a little hay, without corn, keep horses in excellent condition 

 for performing all kinds of ordinary labour. The farmers begin to feed their horses with 

 carrots in December, and continue to give them chiefly that kind of provender till the 

 beginning or middle of May ; to which period, with proper care, carrots may be pre- 

 served. As many of the farmers in that country are of opinion tliat carrots are not so 

 good for horses in winter as in spring, they give only half the above allowance of carrots 

 at first, and add a little corn for a few weeks after they begin to use carrots. 



5466. The application of the carrot to the feeding of ivorking cattle and hogs is thus detailed by Bur- 

 rows : "1 begin to take up the carrot crop in the last week of October, as at that time 1 generally finish 

 soiling my horses with lucern, and now solely depend upon my carrots, with a proper allowance of hay, as 

 winter food for my horses, until about the first week of June following, when the lucern is again ready for 

 soiling. By reducing this practice to a system, I have been enabled to feed ten cart-horses throughout 

 the winter months for these last six years, without giving them any corn whatever, and liave at the same 

 time effected a considerable saving of hay, from what I found necessary to give to the same number of 

 horses, when, according to the usual custom of the country, I fed my horses with corn and hay. I give 

 them to my cart-horses in the proportion of seventy pounds' weight of carrots a horse per day, upon an 

 average ; not allowing them quite so many in the very short days, and sometimes more than that quantity 

 in the spring months, or to the am.ount of what I withheld in the short winter days. The men who tend 

 the horses slice some of the carrots in the cut chafi'or hay, and barn-door refuse ; the rest of the carrots 

 they give whole to the horses at night, with a small quantity of hay in their racks ; and with this food my 

 horses generally enjoy uninterrupted health. I mention this, as I believe that some persons think that 

 carrots only, given as" food to horses, are injurious to their constitutions ; but most of the prejudices of 

 mankind have no better foundation, and are taken up at random, or inherited from their grandfathers. 

 So successful have I been with carrots, as a winter food for horses, that with the assistance of lucern for 

 soiling in summer, I have been enabled to prove by experiments conducted under my own personal in- 

 spection, that an able Norfolk team-horse, fully worked two journeys a day, winter and summer, may be 

 kept the entire year round upon the produce of only one statute acre of land. I have likewise applied 

 carrots with great profit to the feeding of hogs in winter, and by that means have made my straw into a 

 most excellent manure, without the aid of neat cattle; the hogs so fed are sold on Norwich hill to the 

 London dealers as porkers." The profit of carrots so applied he shows in a subsequent statement, 

 together with an experiment of feeding four Galloway bullocks with carrots, against four others fed in 

 the common way with turnips and hay. {Communications, &c.) 



5467. In comparing the carrot with the potato, an additional circumstance greatly in favour of the former 

 is, that it does not require to be steamed or boiled, and it is not more difficult to wash than the 

 potato. These and other circumstances considered, it appears to be the most valuable of all roots for 

 working horses. 



5468. The use of the carrot in domestic economy is well known. Their produce of nutritive matter, as 

 ascertained by Sir H. Davy, amounts to ninety-eight parts in one thousand, of which three are starch, 

 and ninety-five sugar. They are used in the dairy in winter and spring to give colour and flavour to but- 

 ter. In the distillery, owing to the great proportion of sugar in their composition, they yield more spirit 

 than the potato : the usual quantity is twelve gallons per ton. They are excellent in soups, stews, and 

 haricots, and boiled whole with salt beef, 



5469. To save carrot seed, select annually some of the moi* perfect and best-shaped 

 roots in the taking-up season, and either preserve them in sand in a cellar till spring, 

 or plant them immediately in an open airy part of the garden, protecting them with 

 litter during severe frosts, or earthing them over, and uncovering them in March follow- 

 ing. The seed is in no danger of being contaminated by any other plant, as the wild 

 carrot, even should it happen to grow in the neighbourhood, flowers later. In August 

 it vdll be fit to gather, and is best preserved on the stalks till wanted. This is the most 



