Meritw-Ryeland Breed of Sheep. 503 



This crop will begin to be fit for use, by the bursting of some of the cabbages, 

 about the latter end of August, and will continue till the month of February, 

 when it will be met by the spring crop above described. Many persons have 

 complained of its maturity at a season, when, as they say, it is not wanted ; and, 

 in order to obviate this pretended evil, recommend a transplantation so late as 

 even the month of May. But this expedient, on one hand, does not prevent the 

 evil against which it is intended to guard, and, on the other hand, by shortening 

 the period of vegetation in the plant, much diminishes the weight of the crop. It is 

 surely a strange kind of reasoning, by which a man deduces evil from abun- 

 dance, at any season of the year. There is no season at which a store sheep will 

 not profitably eat a cabbage; and if, by this expedient, we can save our grass, and 

 thus lay up a greater provision of rouen for our ewes and lambs in the spring, we 

 shall certainly obtain a very valuable end. 



The extent to which drum-head cabbages, well cultivated on a few acres of 

 good and suitable land, will go in feeding sheep, would not be believed by those 

 who have not made the experiment. With me, no frost has materially hurt them ; 

 and it requires a very deep sriow to cover them. In a more northern situation, 

 even in this island, they may not, however, in these and certain other respects, equal 

 the Swedish turnip. They may be given to the sheep once or twice a day, either 

 at a distance from the ground producing them, by cutting off the head, and giving 

 it three or four chops with a bill-hook; or on the ground itself, by folding the 

 sheep on various parts of it in succession. In both ways, the cabbages are cleanly 

 eaten up j and, in the latter, much more easily and profitably than turnips, great 

 part of which is under ground, and mixed with the dirt of the soil. The sheep 

 wholly consume the head of the cabbage, and even scoop out the stem to a con- 

 siderable depth. , 



If the winter and spring cabbages are to be followed by a summer and autumnal 

 sowing, or planting, the stumps should remain as long as possible in the ground, 

 and will produce a very copious growth of sprouts, which will be advantageously 

 fed off by the ewes and lambs before ploughing. 



Besides the drum-head cabbage, I have fed my sheep, at the commencement of 

 the autumn, with early York and Battersea cabbage, planted out in the spring. In 

 the year 1804, 1 thus planted less than an acre and a quarter of land, on which 

 sheep were kept as follows :— From August 17th, 30 ewes were on it for four 



