MR. fay's address. 9 



do, liis lambs ■would come earlier to market and would be in good 

 condition and command high prices, instead of being sold for their 

 pelts. 



This recommendation to grow turnips must not exclude, nor was 

 it intended to do so, the cultivation of other roots. Beets and 

 carrots for some lands, are more profitable than turnips, besides 

 being better food for milch cows. Every farmer can soon learn by 

 experience which root thrives best on his land, and having learned 

 this, he Avill be blind to his own interest if he does not cultivate it. 

 In England and Scotland the turnip takes precedence of all other 

 roots, and from being originally cultivated as the best fallo^v crop 

 before wheat, rather than from its intrinsic value, it is now the most 

 important one grown.* A leading English agriculturalist has said, 

 I beheve with perfect truth, that the failure of the turnip crop in that 

 country would be a heavier blow to its prosperity, than the failure 

 of the Bank of England. It is owing principally to the liberal use 

 of the turnip, that English cattle and sheep have reached their 

 present high state of perfection, making the land support four times 

 the number that could be maintained under the old system of hay 

 and pasture feeding. If we should adopt their practice in this 

 respect, there is no reason why we should go abroad to purchase at 

 enormous prices, animals which in all essential qualities are no better, 

 if as good as our native stock. 



There is a reason for extending the cultivation of the turnip 

 which no farmer who has felt and witnessed the present summer's 

 drought will think lightly of. Our climate is one of vicissitudes, 

 more extreme in their character than any other under the sun. 

 The old saying that " it never rains but it pours," is strictly true 

 of New England. It is either a deluge here or a drought, and the 

 most weatherwise of us cannot truly foretell what the coming month 

 shall bring in the way of heat or cold, sunshine or rain. We are 

 tolerably certain, however, of one thing, that a " dry time may be 

 expected " during the summer. It is therefore important that we 

 should vary our crops as much as possible, so that the periods of 

 their planting and maturing may run through the entire season. 

 The fate of the hay crop is pretty well settled before the turnip is 



*Iii Haddingtonshire, Scotland, in 1853, one sixth of the entire arable land 

 was in turnips, exceeding the number of acres in wheat, which is the money crop^ 

 by nearly one thousand acres. 



2 



