BOTANY AS APPLIED TO VETERINARY SCIENCE. 389 
nial in the cultivated one; stem trispid below , flowers yellow, 
pod cylindrical or obscurely four-angular, seeds forming slight 
prominences, beak awl-shaped, striate sometimes, with a single 
seed . 
Apparently the origin of the Swedish turnip of our agricul¬ 
turists, and in Scotland it has never been found except where 
the Swedish turnip has been previously cultivated. ( Hooker 
and Arnott.) 
This plant, from w*hich it is generally supposed all our va¬ 
rieties of Swedish turnip have originated, was introduced into 
this country from Germany about the middle of the last century, 
since which time, under the influence of agriculture and 
chemistry, it has become one of our most valuable plants, as 
yielding a very large supply of food for our domestic animals. 
It resembles the white turnip in many of its general proper¬ 
ties, but surpasses it in value in nearly all. It flowers in 
June or July, and its bulb has a specific gravity of from £0 
to 25 per cent, more than the common turnip, and contains 
a much larger quantity, weight for weight, of saccharine 
matter. “ Half a pound of the Swedish turnip yields 110 
grains of nutritive matter; the same quantity of the garden 
turnips yields only 85 grains.” The following is an analysis 
of the Swedish turnip by Dr. Voelcker: 
Water.89‘460 
Flesh-forming substances .... 1*443 
Fatty matters ..... not determined. 
Sugar, pectin, gum, &c 5*932 
Woody fibre ..2*542 
Inorganic matters (ash) .... 0*623 
Turnips are usually consumed as food by sheep and oxen, 
although in some instances they have been given to horses, 
both in a raw and boiled condition, and the animals so fed 
have been said to gain flesh very rapidly. The seeds of the 
turnip are very small, and some idea of the enormous increase 
in material may be formed from the following statement. “ An 
ordinary or average field turnip, of the kinds most commonly 
cultivated in Britain, weighs about 6 or 7 lbs., and one of a 
larger variety, grown under the most favorable circumstances, 
weighs from 20 to nearly 30 lbs.” A calculation has been 
made that one ounce of turnip seed contains from 15,000 to 
16,000 seeds ; that therefore each seed weighs only about a 
15,000th or 16,000th part of an ounce; and that when develop¬ 
ing itself into a plant, whose cauline bulb has an average 
weight of about 6 or 7 lbs., it must, on a supposition of uni¬ 
form increase of substance during the period of growth, ac¬ 
quire fifteen times its own weight in a minute; and by an 
xxxiv. 29 
