498 History of the Author's 



land be manured immediately after mowing, which not only greatly increases the 

 quantity of this valuable produce, but that of the next summer's crop. 



Rouen forms a sort of intermediate food between the dry and the green. I am 

 now to speak of those which are purely of the latter kind. 



Of turnips, I know little from experience, except that, on my farm, they are, 

 in every respect, much inferior to the cabbage tribe.* In proper soils they have, 

 doubdess, great merit, especially in the mode in which they are cultivated in 

 Northumberland ; but on stiff land they are less productive ; and every where 

 more troublesome of culture, more subject to original failure and subsequent de- 

 struction, less aifected by sheep and neat catde, more difficult to eat, either on the 

 ground where they grow, or elsewhere, and more liable to be covered with snow, 

 and therefore unfit for use. The Swedish turnip is, in some respects, less objection- 

 able than our former kinds ; but to mc would be of little value for late spring food, 

 because it begins to shoot afresh in the month of April, when it is most wanted, 

 and the root then becomes woody and unnutritive. In this species I have much 

 regretted the waste which is sustained by the withering of the autumnal leaves. 

 These are extremely numerous, very thick and large, and, doubtless, highly nutri- 

 tious; but, during the following frost, decay, and are entirely lost. Were I again 

 to cultivate this plant, I would try what injury the root would sustain by a cautious 

 removal of these leaves as soon as they had ceased to grow. 



I come now to speak of the cabbage, on which I have long been accustomed 

 to place my chief dependence for the winter and spring food of my flock, and which, 

 I can truly say, has never yet deceived me. There is, indeed, no part of the year, 

 in which my sheep will not greedily devour it. Perhaps this vegetable may be pecu- 

 liarly-adapted to my soil ; which is a somewhat stiff, and what the farmers call 

 hungry loam, of from 4 to 6 inches in depth, and incumbent on a stratum of dry 

 calcarious rubble stone. As the method which I pursue in cultivating the cabbage, 

 which is chielly the drum-head, has been tolerably successful, and is, in one essen- 

 tial point, different from (hat commonly practised, it may not be uninteresting to 

 describe it in this place. 



It seems to have been received as a general principle, that vegetables should 

 always be transplanted into a good soil from one which is poorer ; in conformity 

 with which, seeds are seldom directed to be sown on highly-manured earth, but on 



