970 THE COMPLETE GRAZIER. BOOK x. 



or north of England, or than Scotland, where it is comparatively little 

 grown, though, where soil and climate are suitable, very much larger 

 crops can be grown than of turnips, provided very heavy dressings of 

 farmyard manure are employed. 



The chief insect enemy of the mangel crop is the mangel or beet fly, 

 Anthomyia betae, a two- winged fly (fig. 449), the maggot of which 

 blisters the leaf by feeding within its tissues. A dressing of 2 cwt. of 

 nitrate of soda per acre has been found useful as a remedy. 1 



CABBAGE (Brassica oleracea, L., nat. ord., Cruciferse). The CABBAGE 

 FAMILY is quite as important as the turnip family, and belongs similarly 

 to the useful order of the Cruciferse. Though farmers have been slow 

 to appreciate the crop, yet cabbage-culture is undoubtedly extending. 

 The several kinds in cultivation may be classified under four heads : 



(1) Those which grow with a long upright stem and do not form a 

 " heart," the leaves or sprouts being the portion developed, as in the 

 Thousand-headed Kale. 



(2) Those which form a compact head by the infolding of the leaves, 

 as in the Common Cabbage. 



(3) Those in which the stem is developed so as to form what 

 looks like a "root" above ground, as the Kohl-rabi, which was once 

 commonly spoken of as the Turnip-rooted Cabbage. 



(4) Those in which the stem divides and forms a corymbose head of 

 imperfect flowers, as the Cauliflower and Broccoli, which are grown 

 more in market-garden farming than on ordinary stock farms. 



The increasing attention which is being given to the cultivation of 

 cabbages in the place of turnips demands a few remarks here. The 

 chief disadvantage of cabbage and kale is that they require to occupy 

 the land longer than turnips ; and for this reason, where the Norfolk 

 system is rigidly enforced, it is difficult to grow maximum crops of 

 all of them. But since landlords have become less stringent, farmers 

 are able to adapt their systems to meet their own ideas, and one of these 

 is to so arrange their cropping that more cabbages may be grown. 

 Another reason that rendered cabbages unpopular was that they were 

 thought to " draw " the land. They certainly do not allow any 

 available manure to be wasted while they are on the ground, for they 

 are greedy feeders, and are capable of making use of almost any amount 

 of manure without becoming diseased, as is so often the case with corn 

 crops. As, however, the crop is usually fed back to the land, there 

 is no reason why there should be undue exhaustion. The idea 

 probably originated from observations made in the spring, and the results 

 of those observations have been applied to the crop throughout the 

 year. If cabbages are fed off in summer or autumn, and the steins are 

 allowed to sprout again, they will make vigorous growth in the spring, 

 and will utilise any available manure. If the feeding off is delayed 

 until such time as the land is required for seeding with spring corn, 

 then the land will be in a temporarily impoverished condition, as the 



1 A paper on "The Early Feeding of Mangels to Stock," by Dr. J. Augustus Voelcker, 

 appeared in the Journal of the Koyal Agricultural Society, 3rd series, vol. x., 1899, p. 559. 



