THE TURNIP CROP. 287 



least, have been done as early as the 1 6th century ; for Ray, 

 writing in the middle, or rather near the end, of the seven- 

 teenth, says distinctly that the turnip was grown univer- 

 sally both in garden and in field. It is due, however, to 

 the memory of Lord Charles Townshend (1730) to state 

 that, whatever might have been done by others who pre- 

 ceded him, to his care the turnip crop owes the high place 

 in farm cropping which it now occupies. We next find 

 that in Norfolk the crop was held in such esteem by the 

 advanced agriculturists there, that it formed a part of the 

 regular rotations, to which, doubtless, it had been raised 

 by the facilities which the system of hoeing introduced by 

 the celebrated Jethro Tull afforded for its successful cul- 

 ture. From Norfolk the culture of the turnip spread to 

 other districts ; and of these the northern ones of Northum- 

 berland, and the Border counties of Scotland, may be 

 named as the chief. By the end of the eighteenth century 

 the crop may be said to have firmly established itself as 

 part of British farming. But it must be noticed here, that 

 the turnips cultivated embraced only the ordinary kinds of 

 the species Brassica rapa, and did not include the swede, 

 the most important of all the modern varieties of the crop. 

 This was not introduced till about the beginning of the 

 nineteenth century, or at least, as is conjectured, close to 

 the termination of the eighteenth. As to the history of 

 the introduction of the swede, we have yet somewhat to 

 say in another and more appropriate part of this chapter. 

 Meanwhile we proceed to note that the turnip belongs to 

 the dicotyledonous (exogenous) plants, or those which have 

 two cotyledons. In fig. 8 we illustrate, for the sake of 

 the tyro in agricultural botany, in a rough diagram, a turnip 

 plant in its early stages : a a the rootlets ; b the stem ; 

 from the upper part of this the two cotyledons c c, or first 

 leaves, proceed; these are smooth, and have a peculiar 

 form, as shown : the leaf proper, a rough leaf d, follows 

 these. The dicotyledonous plants are divided into two 

 sub-classes, the diclilamydece and the monochlamydece 

 the turnip belonging to the first of these, the dichlamydece, 



