AGRICULTURE. 
fee artificially made so for tlieir culture, 
which may be easily effected by trench- 
ploughing, Loams and sandy soils are the 
only ones in which they will flourish, and 
no dung can be used for them in the year 
they are sown, as it will inevitably rot 
them. The ground must be prepared for 
them by the deepest possible furrows, and, 
when they are sown, about tire beginning 
of April, it must be smoothed by a brake. 
In large plots of ground, where horse- 
hoeing is requisite, three feet should be the 
distance between the drills. Where an 
acre or a little more only is employed, the 
interval should not be greater than a foot, 
and hand-hoeing will be found more con- 
venient, and scarcely attended with greater 
expense. From six to nine hundred bu- 
shels have been produced per acre of this 
root, where the land has been carefully 
prepared and attended to. As food for 
horses, its culture is rapidly spreading. For 
oxen, milch, cows, and pigs, carrots are 
admirably applicable and nourishing, and, 
when boiled, turkeys and other poultry are 
fed on them with great success. 
The ease with which parsnips are culti- 
vated, and the great quantity of saccharine 
and nutritious matter which they contain, 
in which they are scarcely exceeded by any 
vegetable whatever, render them well wor- 
thy of the attention of the husbandman. 
Though little used in Britain, they are highly 
esteemed in many districts of France, in some 
parts being thought little inferior to wheat 
as food for man. Cows which are fed with 
them are stated to -give as much milk as they 
do in the months of summer. All animals 
eat them with avidity, and in preference to 
potatoes, and fatten more quickly upon 
them. In the cultivation of them the seed 
should be sown in the autumn, immediately 
after it is reaped. When the seed is put in 
at this season, the plants will anticipate the 
growth of weeds in the following spring. 
Frost never does them any material injury. 
The best soil for them is a deep, rich loam. 
Sand is next suitable to them; and in a 
black, gritty soil they will flourish, but not 
in gravel or clay. In the deepest earth 
they are always largest. In an appropriate 
soil no manure is necessary for them, and 
a very good crop has been obtained for three 
years in succession, without using any. The 
seed should be sown in drills, at the dis- 
tance of eighteen inches, for the greater 
convenience of hoeing ; and by a second hoe- 
ing and a c'autious earthing, by which the 
leaves may not be covered, the crop will 
VOL, I. 
be luxuriant. In Jersey, the root has beert 
known and cultivated for several centuries, 
and is highly valued. It is considered as 
an excellent preparation for wheat, which, 
after parsnips, yields an abundant crop, 
without any manure, 
The profit of cultivating hemp-seed is by 
no means small. It requires, however, the 
best land that can be found on a farm, or 
which is made such by manuring. A rich, 
deep, putrid, and friable loam, is wliat it 
particularly delights in ; and in addition 
to natural richness, forty cubical yards of 
dung per acre should be applied. Besides 
this original cost of land in natural richness 
and preparation, it is to be considered that 
hemp returns nothing to the farm yard, 
while corn will give straw, and the dung- 
hill is improved by green crops. The ques- 
tion concerning the propriety of its culti- 
vation by any individual is not to be deter- 
mined, therefore, only from the circum- 
stance of any price in the market, but is to 
be inferred from a view of all its bearings 
and connections. For matiy crops, tillage 
should be given with caution. With hemp 
Such caution is unnecessary, as its rank and 
luxuriant growth proves fatal to all those 
weeds by which corn would not 'only be in- 
jured, but destroyed. From this autumn 
preceding to the time of sowing hemp, the 
land should be three or four times ploughed, 
and be well harrowed to a fine surface. The 
quantity of dung should be proportioned to 
the deficiency of the soil ; and when the 
culture is continued from year to year, a 
plentiful dressing must be every time ap- 
plied. About twelve pecks should be sown 
per acre : and as the destruction of weeds 
in the tillage is here no object, the broad- 
cast method is universally preferable to the 
drill. It will be ready for pulling in Au- 
gust, or about thirteen weeks after it is 
sown. 
Flax, with due attention, will repay its 
cultivation ; but, generally speaking, in 
this country the same land and manure may 
be more conveniently and profitably ap- 
plied. Two bushels an acre is the requi- 
site quantity of seed, and the land, if it be 
not particularly rich by nature, must be 
rendered so by art, must be worked to a 
fine surface, and be kept perfectly free from 
Weeds. 
The preparation for rape-seed is the same 
which is necessary for that of turnips. It 
is a crop subject to great injury, and ex- 
tremely uncertain. In the conquered coun- 
tries in the north of Fiance, the practice is 
F 
