TURNIP. 219 



conjecture, but nothing is more useless. Let pre- 

 miums be offered; let the microscope be called 

 in; let many experiments be made; and, if no- 

 thing will do, recourse must be had to a plant 

 of some other kind, till the new insect, or rather 

 till the insect that has found in the turnip a 

 new supply of food, and has multiplied according 

 to the extent of its provision, be starved by the 

 change, and compelled to draw in the boundaries of 

 its empire, leaving some other creature to grow 

 great in its turn by feeding on the new and substi- 

 tuted plant. Thus it would appear, that agricul- 

 ture, without any clog appended by unpropitious 

 laws of the State, or ruin inflicted by Gothic inva- 

 sions, has in nature certain restrictions which deny 

 to her a course at once surely and indefinitely pro- 

 gressive that whilst the territories reclaimed from 

 sterility are yet held, and the wealth they have 

 produced is yet unimpaired, the knowledge that has 

 been slowly and laboriously gotten must needs be 

 abandoned, and the cultivator must turn back, 

 with childlike effort, to get new skill of things yet 

 unknown and untried. Thus there will never be a 

 time in which it may be said that nothing new has 

 to be learned; thus industry is stimulated, whilst 

 pride is repressed repressed, in the present in- 

 stance, by the discovery that the labour and science 

 of an age which have been carried so far in the 

 turnip husbandry as to change the face of the 

 country, and to effect all its economical arrangements, 

 may be marred by an enemy, keeping pace in the 



