INTEODTrCTION". XVll 



one is in the habit of seeing, care has been taken to 

 give the details of the same, including the methods of 

 working and types of ploughs made use of, but no par- 

 ticular plough has been recommended, as our agricul- 

 tural implements are far superior to those used on the 

 continent of Europe. The various mechanical devices 

 which the American farmer has at his disposal would 

 doubtless enable him, while paying higher for labor, to 

 produce the roots as cheaply as is done in Europe — 

 cheapness in the end being more certainly reached 

 through that intellectual development which enables 

 men to avail themselves of the forces of nature, than 

 through that brutalization of human beings which shuts 

 out all possibility of doing more with them than merely 

 using them as we do beasts of burthen. 



The weeding, under ordinary cultivation (drills), 

 cannot be satisfactorily accomplished, and efforts have 

 been made to show the advantages of the cultivation 

 in hills, which is without doubt better for beet culture, 

 and especially in America, where the importance of 

 using a subsoil plough does not seem to have been as 

 yet well understood. At the present day many of the 

 European farmers have discovered, now that it is too 

 late, that better results would have been obtained both 

 to their lands and their crops if it had been adopted 

 years ago — the only objection being that it requires 

 a special appliance. But in a country where the root 

 has not yet been planted, where a given type of imple- 

 ment is no longer an obstacle, it should be the system. 



