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V. — Beet-root Distillery. By F. R. de la TRfenoiTNAis. 
The cultivation of root crops, wherever it has been adopted as 
one of the elements of the rotative course of husbandry, has never 
failed to achieve a most remarkable improvement in agriculture, 
not only as an immediate and profitable source of production to 
the farmer, but also as a powerful means of bringing the land to 
that desirable state of cleanliness and comminution of tilth, 
without which manures are powerless in the soil, and 'the natural 
elements of fertility which the soil may possess, unavailing. 
In England the necessity of an increased supply of fodder for 
improved breeds of cattle has made the cultivation of root crops 
one of the most lucrative operations of husbandry : inasmuch as 
its immediate result is the production of meat, dairy produce, 
and manure, the market value of which is not only steady, but 
gradually increasing ; whereas the price of cereals is fickle beyond 
human control, continually ascending or descending, — between 
extreme dearth too abnormal to last, and extreme cheapness 
ruinous to the producer. It may then be asserted that the pro- 
duction of beef and mutton is the pivot upon which the whole 
system of English agriculture revolves. Since the repeal of the 
Corn Laws the London market has become the cereal mart of the 
world ; and the price of wheat in England is not so much regu- 
lated by the accidents of scarcity or plenty at home, as b}' the 
same accidents all over the world. If the wheat crop has failed 
in cloudy England, it does not follow that the English farmer 
will find in the enhanced price of that commodity a compensa- 
tion for the deficiency in the produce of his land ; the cheering 
beams of plenty are shedding joy and riches in more favoured 
lands, and the reflection of foreign harvests is permitted to shine 
upon free England. 
Although the cultivation of root crops has furnished the 
English farmer with the means of combating the effect of 
an unshackled foreign competition in corn upon his own market, 
by enabling him to feed a larger supply of beef and mutton, 
it does not follow that the same happy results would be a 
sufficient incentive in France, for instance, to lead to the adop- 
tion of that cultivation ; for it is obvious that the beneficial 
results of that culture would by no means be identical. English 
breeds of cattle have been so much improved within the last fifty 
years in their precocity and wonderful aptitude to fatten, that the 
time thev have to remain in the feedinof-stall has been reduced at 
least by half, as compared with continental breeds. A bullock 
when two years or two years and a half old ; a sheep at twelve 
or fourteen months ; a pig at nine months, are sent to the 
shambles, and realized in hard cash. AVhcreas periods of twice, 
