No. 129.] 313 



turnip should be credited, for all its ases for men, cattle, &c., 

 one half^ Now surely we may claim for the root crop all possible 

 care and respect, when the turnip of one year alone can furnish 

 a United States revenue of fifty millions per annum for thirty 

 years ! And when we shall fully cultivate California, our tur- 

 nip crops will be truly singular for their weight and bulk, for 

 turnips have often attained the size of three feet in circumference, 

 with a weigh! of twenty pounds each. An acre of California tur 

 nips, each one of the size mentioned and growing close together, 

 could yield the weight per acre of about 840,000 pounds, or 420 

 tons, so that one acre would yield the weight of 467 acres of wheat 

 at 30 bushels the acre. The large figures are, nevertheless, avail- 

 able, to show the monstrous difference in quantity between the 

 surface and the root crops. 



Some have said that the large proportion of \vater in roots di- 

 minishes greatly their nutritive quantity, in comparison with 

 grain. Now, it appears that, while in the potato three-fourths 

 of it is water, yet in the best bread of Paris, Dumas found, by 

 analysis, 45 per cent of water, which was deemed to be hardly 

 possible, yet it is now known to be correct. Strong flour having 

 in it the greatest proportion of gluten, absorbs and retains the 

 greatest proportion of water. It is true, on experience, that the 

 weight of bread or of the roots taken into the stomach by men or 

 animals, does not very widely differ in quantity. 



[From th« Lonisville Joartoetl.] 



L. Young, Esq., has information of a new sweet potato from 

 Peru (as supposed) altogether different from any other. White 

 as snow inside, dry, mealy, has the saccharine resembling virgin 

 honey, grows to prodigious size, even on the poorest sandy land. 

 The roots remain without change until the following May. 

 Grows equally well from slip or vine See Commercial Adver- 

 tiser of July 1, 1851 



H. MEIGS. 



ROOTS 



Leibig remarks that — " All substances in solution in a soil are 

 absorbed by the root^ of plants exactly as a sponge imbibes a 



