CARTER AND CO.’S GARDENER’S VADE-MECUM FOR 18G2. 
103 
the credit of an entirely altered system of arable manage- 
ment is duo, in the first place, to the Turnip. We now 
mako more meat on plough-land during the winter months 
than during the summer ; a thing which is certainly very 
different from the agricultural experience of half a cen- 
tury ago. Formerly men lived on salted meat in winter 
time, and summer was the only period of the year during 
which cattle fattened. Now winter is, on arable farms, 
the great feeding and manure-making period of the year, 
and the growth of grain crops consequent upon the im- 
proved management of our arable land has enormously 
increased. The more cattle the more corn is a true adage, 
which has been wonderfully illustrated during the past 
century in our own country ; and it is now also being gra- 
dually illustrated in France by the gradual extension of 
the means of feeding a greater herd of live stock. 
The Swedish Turnip and the Common Turnip are two 
distinct species of the genus Brassica , characterized, the one 
by its smooth, and the other by its rough leaves when 
fully grown. Of the Swedish Turnip there arc ten or 
twelve sorts, and new ones aro every day coming into 
fashion. Among these are Skirving’s large and somewhat 
coarse variety, solid, succulent, productive, but running 
rather too much to neck and leaf; Laing’s neater, not so 
large, with leaf entire, and feathered down to its junction 
with the bulb ; producing fewer tons per acre of a softer- 
fleshed root ; Carter’s Improved London, a smaller 
root; hard, crisp, juicy, hardy, in every respect first- 
rate, running less to seed, which is indeed another of 
its merits, can be recommended as the best Swede in 
cultivation ; the Common Green and Purple Swedes, 
both good old-fasliioned sorts ; and many others in- 
troduced by the different seedsmen, and improved by 
constant selection, until the produce is believed to de- 
serve their name, and thus add to the reputation of the 
farmer who had introduced it. Of the Common Turnip, 
again, there is an even greator number of varieties, Globe, 
Flat, and Tankard-shaped, Green, Red, and White, hard 
almost as a Swede, and so soft, in some lew cases, as to 
disappear under almost the, earliest frost. Among those wo 
may name Dale’s Hybrid, the Aberdeen Green-top and 
Purple-top Yellow, the Green-top White Globe, the Lin- 
colnshire Red-topped Globe, the G reen and Red Tankards, 
the large White Globe, or Norfolk Turnip, often reaching 
20 lbs. apiece, and the Common Stone and Stubble Turnips, 
are rapid growers, and therefore fit for sowing later than 
any other. Of these, we sow the Swedes first, not earlier, 
however, than the last week in May in England ; the hy- 
brids next, the Yellow Turnip, all of good solid flesh, 
often the hybrids and the Soft White Rounds, and Tank- 
ards last, even so late as September, on a properly pre- 
pared corn stubble. And these roots are consumed in the 
reverse order of succession, the soft Whites being con- 
sumed first, the harder Turnip next, and the Swedes last. 
In Scotland, the Common Yellow Turnips are kept on, 
and remain good till much later in the year than in Eng- 
land, and all these sorts are more nutritive there than 
in the South. There is no such thing here as fattening 
cattle on Tuniips and straw alone, which is practicable 
thero 
A groat deal hinges not only on the selection of a good 
sort of seed, but on choosing it when it is perfectly grown. 
When the seed is gathered from a late-sown crop left to 
seed, which had been intended to be consumed upon the 
ground, and is thus taken from the ordinary run of roots, 
it is not so good as when grown from selected roots trans- 
planted into fresh ground, and thus taken out of the 
natural and wild style of reproduction, which tends rather 
to permit the plant going back to the original wild 
typo. The principle that plants bring forth “ of their 
kind” should be acted upon, in order that the best kind 
only may be reproduced, and this can only be effected by 
choosing the best-formed roots, whether they bo Turnips, 
Mangold, Carrots, or Parsnips, for seeding. 
The cidtivation of the crop is in this wise: — For the 
stiffer class of soils as much is done in Autumn as possi- 
ble ; and whether the crop is to be grown on raised drills 
or in rows upon the flat, as much as possible is done to 
clean the land and manure it in the Autumn. If the 
former plan be adopted, as soon as the Wheat or Oat crop 
is removed the land is scarified, and harrowed, and raked 
together and burned ; and if foul, it is ploughed, and 
harrowed, and rolled, and grubbed and weeded repeatedly, 
until cleaned. If already clean, the use of the scarifier 
and harrow is alone needed until the land is ribbed up 
by the plough for the reception of the manure. This 
is then carted out of the yards and stalls on to the 
land, spread in the drills, and covered by splitting the in- 
tervening ridgelets, and left till April. Whatever ar- 
tificial manure it may be intended to apply is sown 
broadcast, then, over all, and the land may then be slightly 
harrow’ed down, the horse-hoe put through the intervals 
between the drills, and the land then ridged again by the 
plough, and the Turnip-seed sowm towards June, with a 
greater chance of success than it would have had if the 
whole cidtivation had been left till Spring, or if the land 
had been ploughed again after Winter, thus turning up 
clay soil unaffected by the frost, which would have to be 
reduced by the harrow and the roller, with small chance 
of so fine a tilth resulting as is produced by the action 
of a Winter’s weather. 
On the ordinary Turnip ( i.e . lighter) soils the stubble is 
first ploughed after harvest, and the land in Spring is 
harrowed down and cross-ploughed, and soon brought to 
tilth and cleanness, and then it is ribbed up for the 
manure; the guano and the superphosphate is sown 
broadcast over the open drills, with the manure in them, 
and the whole covered up as before by the double-mould 
board plough, so that the artificial manure, while partly 
spread throughout the soil, is brought for the most part 
pretty much into the centre of the future ridge on which, 
as in the other cases, the seed is sown in May and June. 
From two to four pounds of seed are sown per acre by 
the double Turnip drill ; and if there be any chance of 
drought, it is at once rolled down by a light w r ooden poller 
immediately after sowing. And in a couple of weeks or 
so the crop is into rough leaf, and the plant is compara- 
tively safe from the Turnip-fly. The attacks of the fly 
are most severe diming the existence of the sweet first leaf 
of the plant, and very often the crop is then destroyed by 
it. Various expedients have been devised and acted on 
with more or less success for evading this pest. The 
period of danger should, by using forcing manure, and by 
thicker sowing, and also by sowing by the water-drill, be 
shortened. The flies themselves, too, are often directly 
attacked by contrivances, such as drawing a painted board 
over the rows, to which the insects adhere, as they jump on 
being disturbed. 
Mr. Rowley, too, lias devised a dusting drill, by which 
lime-dust and soot may be tlirown down upon the rows over 
which it is drawn in the dewy morning, when all this dust 
will adhere to the leaf. Major Munn has contrived a set 
of revolving brushes, by wliich the insects are gathered up 
and carried away. It is, however, we believe, an almost 
hopeless task to attack a great plague of Turnip-fly di- 
rectly in this way. And the only hope to which any pro- 
bability attaches, is that by hastening the growth of the 
plant it may be hurried out of danger’s way. Mr. Poppy, 
indeed, has asserted that the fly is much fonder of Com- 
mon Turnips than of Swedes ; and he alleges that by 
sowing an occasional row of the former in the midst of the 
latter, he has confined the attack of the fly to tliis decoy 
plant until the main crop of Swedes has grown out of 
reach of injury. After this, however, the Turnip-crop is 
still liable to destruction by various caterpillars. This, 
however, is generally after the plant has grown a good 
way on to maturity, and before then the crop has to be 
singled. The distance to which the plants should be se- 
parated in the rows is a point on which local experience 
can alone be a guide. They are generally singled out 
from 10 to 12 inches apart, and it is evident that if, by 
giving them greater room, you can in that proportion in- 
