X. 



THEORY AND PRACTICE. 



THE comparative failure of that portion of my first 

 Turnip crop, which had drawn so heavily and so 

 laboriously upon the meagre resources of the farm- 

 yard, produced a changed position of the game, which 

 gave me some surprise. I found myself at length 

 my own severest critic. Whether from the con- 

 tinuing force of that early prepossession in favour of 

 the 'good old stuff,' which had laid the bets as 

 heavily as the manure upon that part of the field, 

 or whether the fact of the mere germination of a 

 turnip-seed where it had never shown its delicate 

 cotyledon before, was triumph enough, it is hard to 

 say; but somehow or other it was the fashion to 

 semi-dignify with the title of a l fair little crop ' even 

 those five acres which so wretchedly disappointed my 

 own expectations. As for the crop where the guano 



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