Exhibition Addresses. 155 



twenty years must past away before an orcliarcl begins to yield fruit, 

 and that is a long time to wait for a dividend from any investment. 

 The value of root crops is, I regret to say, still but little understood 

 in this country. I discuss the turnip crop with many men, and I 

 find they have not yet got beyond the English flat turnip ; a root 

 hardly worth calling a field crop. The great root of modern agricul- 

 ture for cattle feeding, the S^vedish turnip, the purple-top king of the 

 Swedes, is unknown to them still ; the cheapest root that can be 

 raised ; sown on light lands, the middle of June, and treated mainly 

 with super-phospliate of bones ; and the best root to feed store cattle 

 and young cattle, and, for horses, vastly superior to the carrot. You 

 can raise nine times as much food in weight of Swedes on an acre as 

 you can of hay, with the same condition of land, and each pound of 

 this hay finds its equivalent, in nutritive properties, in three pounds of 

 turnips. You can judge of their value as determined by tests ; and 

 you should remember that an animal is almost always in better con- 

 dition in the spring, when supplied with roots during the winter, than 

 without them. What I have said of turnips as a most valuable crop 

 for the farmer who is wintering cattle, horses and sheep, will apply 

 to mangolds as a root for a winter dairy. Carrots I have abandoned as 

 too expensive and troublesome in cultivation, as unfit for beef or milk, 

 and less valuable, by far, as a food for horses than the Swedish turnip. 

 I have no doubt that the business of feeding cattle and sheep could 

 be doubled in profit by devotion to the various root crops, and that 

 the great mortality which often prevails among the latter would be 

 avoided by a liberal use of the turnip alone. To select the farm crops 

 judiciously ; to know how much corn to plant, and small grain to 

 raise, as a necessary part of the farm economy, with markets filled 

 ■with these articles ; to ascertain what green crops are best for the 

 soiling of cattle, whether corn fodder, which I think is the poorest, 

 or orchard-grass, or millet, which 1 think is by far the best, are ques- 

 tions still open for every practical farmer to solve for his own benefit 

 and that of his profession. I have hastily presented to your minds 

 the character of agricultural progress in America, and the obstacles 

 which lie in its way, and which by science and practice we are 

 endeavoring to remove. In doing this here, I fear that I should not 

 be doing justice to the agricultural enterprise of the State of New 

 York, did I neglect to call your attention to what she has done and 

 is doing to advance and perfect the great art of agriculture. Does 

 any one doubt the profits of farming ? Let him traverse the thrifty 



