as Snhstituies for Turnips, 
273 
Agricultural Society, presided over by Mr. Joliu Hutton, a 
landed proprietor ot" the district, statements were made by the 
Chairman and others, that owing to the great costs and risks 
suffered in the past in root-growing, they considered it would be 
a great boon to substitute such crops as Mr. Johnson advocates. 
Another instance is afforded of growing mangolds, swedes, 
and cabbages continuously on the same laud by Mr. Henry 
Adkins, Ley Hill, Northfield, Birmingham, who occupies 170 
acres of his own which was formerly half arable and half pasture, 
but with the exception of 12 acres it has now been all laid down 
to grass on which a large milking herd of Shorthorns is kept. 
Mr. Adkins calculates that his swedes cost him 14s. per ton, his 
mangolds 17a'. G(/. per ton, and his cabbages 17s. 9d. per ton, 
they being grown on the same land one year after another at an 
expenditure in manures per acre of 5Z. altogether. 
All investigations of the kind only show the necessity of 
soil, climate, and situation being allowed to determine to a far 
greater extent tlian they do at present the systems of farming 
pursued and the kinds of crops cultivated. What is best for 
.one set of circumstances would be unsuitable and perhaps 
ruinous for another. The Northumbrian, like his Scotch neigh- 
bour, lavishes his farmyard manure without stint on the swede 
crop. He lays it on affluently and covers it up several inches 
thick beneath the ridges where the seed is to be sown, and even 
then he is not satisfied unless 7 or 8 cwt. of bone-manure be 
applied per acre as well by the drill. His object is to get a big 
crop approaching to, if not exceeding, 30 tons per acre, and as 
he can sow in April or early in May, and northern summers are 
usually much more humid than those of the south of England, 
he is actuated by the conviction that there is every chance of 
his enterprise and large exjoenditure proving successful. What- 
ever dung remains unappropriated by the roots is fertility in 
reserve for the succeeding barley crop ; and although in a strictly 
pecuniary sense the worth of the swedes may not equal their 
cost, he considers farm economy can be better insured by stimu- 
lating the fullest and heaviest yield of roots possible than in 
any other way. If he does not get an immediate I'eturn he 
hopes to obtain it in the long run. 
In numerous other districts further southward the same 
heavy expenditure would be calculated to give more- certain and 
far ampler results with mangolds than with swedes, because the 
climate is so much more favourable for the former. We find 
circumstances completely reversed in the respective adaptations 
of the two crops for the north and for the south. The mangold, 
which cannot be depended on very much where summers are 
VOL. XXV. — S. S. T 
