No. 144.] 559 



ration iu succession. Does this indicate that they would bear fall 

 sowing, and would the crop be increased in quantity and quality 

 as wheat is ? Or docs the acrimony and reputed poisonous nature 

 of the wild carrot and parsnip arise from the fall sowing it gets 

 naturally 1 Of the parsnip, Callen, waiting nearly a century ago, 

 says: "The quantity of nourishment contained in it is great. 

 From the parsnep a small quantity of grained sugar and a large 

 one of syrup is extracted, very viscid, with a copious mucillage. 

 " It is said," he continues, "that parsnips, when old. turn very 

 acrid, insomuchas to have produced mania and other dreadful 

 effects. When old, they are called madness by the English." It 

 is curious to notice that, speaking at the same time of the potato, 

 he thought it necessary to combat the popular prejudice against 

 its use. He asserts it to be, in his opinion, " of the most innocent 

 and safest nutriment," and remarks incidentally, that it had then 

 " become of frequent use." Notwithstanding this advantage of 

 the carrot on the start, how does the race they have run during 

 this hundred years, and their present position in popular estima- 

 tion, compare with the figures : Potato, 5.77 ; carrot, 4.67. 



Without depreciating, then, in any measure, the absolute im- 

 portance of the root crop, it maybe remarked, that it does not 

 take, and ought not to take, as prominent a relative place in our 

 rotation as it does In the English. To our corn crop, and pump- 

 kin crop, and apple crop, there is nothing in tlieir system that 

 corresponds ; and the influence that these crops exert with us 

 over the productions of pork and beef, are not fully appreciated 

 the other side of the Atlantic. Our Indian corn crop alone, of 

 these three, is second in value only to the great northern staple 

 of hay, and where it can be raised, is the most important crop of 

 the season, even exceeding in value the wheat, so that it becomes 

 the key to most of the American systems of rotation. There is 

 no word in the European languages that corresponds to " new 

 land," in our acceptation of that term, and our fallow, with its 

 stumps and roots, and entire absence of weeds, and in fact of all 

 vegetation, is entirely American. The condition of our prairies, 

 too, is entirely unrecognized by their dogmas; dogmas that have 

 never yet been able to comprehend the great practical fact that 



