( 248 ) 
MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS AND 
NOTICES. 
1. — Swedes, Mangold, and the Steam-Plough. By Charles 
Lawrence. 
In the 22nd Volume of our Journal I gave some reasons for con- 
sidering it desirable to invite members of the Society to com- 
municate, in short articles, the results of any experiments they 
might have made, or of any special modes of treatment in the 
cultivation of various crops, and in the management and feeding 
of animals, under some such head as " Miscellaneous Communi- 
cations." Reports of this description are often productive of 
utility beyond their intrinsic merits. They set men thinking, 
and thus become the origin of more important practices. I 
send another specimen of the contributions to which I referred, 
in the hope of encouraging others to do the like. 
Some three or four years ago I recommended the mixture of 
mangold and Swedes in the same field, in another publication ; * 
and I gave my reasons for the adoption of that course. Having 
occasionally since observed the admixture, adopted in various 
ways without attention to the special grounds on which it was 
recommended, I will here repeat the principles on which I 
adopted and have continued it with satisfactory results. 
The deterioration of the Swede crop of late years has been 
matter of common remark ; and has been attributed, reasonably 
enough, to the too frequent repetition of the crop on the same 
ground. It had been my practice, as is usual, to feed off the 
Swedes on the land with sheep ;" which produced a heavy 
growth of barley, but always more or less laid by heavy rains in 
June and July, to the great damage of the corn, and the clovers 
sown with it. This was a source of double mischief, requiring 
remedy. As the mangolds are necessarily hauled off for storing 
near the feeding-stalls, it occurred to me that both the dif- 
ficulties which I have referred to might be obviated by grow- 
ing a given number of rows of Swedes, and then the same 
number of rows of mangolds, alternately over the field ; and by 
merely reversing the order of these roots when the field should 
come again in course for the root-crop, the result would be 
* My ' Han'dy-Book for YouDg Farmers.' Longman and Co. 
