466 
PRESENT METHOD OF TURNIP CULTURE. 
Fourthly, there is another potent reason why organic 
matters should be avoided as a seed-bed, namely, in the won¬ 
derful tendency they have at this season to become a mass of 
life, the vitalising influence of the sun acting upon the hidden 
germs of insects, which in favorable seasons rapidly produce 
myriads of those forms that live and prey upon the roots and 
leaves of the young and tender plant, frequently causing the 
farmer to resow his land. These organic manures contain the 
eggs or germs of insects, and act as hot-beds for the pro¬ 
duction of the fly, the smallest fly, &c., spreading all sorts of 
filth to adjacent crops of beans, peas, tares, &c. Every 
garden, every manure heap, every putrifactive mass, shows 
and substantiates this fact. 
To avoid these four causes of disease, and their host of 
consequences, let the manurial seed-bed cease to be adopted. 
Have the whole of the organic manures put on the land in 
winter or early in the spring, and thus deprive the germs of 
insects of life by cold, and afford decay a chance of comple¬ 
tion before the elements are required for vegetation. Pur¬ 
chase also only those mineral manures that are warranted free 
from arsenical or lead contamination. These should be sown 
broadcast in double the quantity a short time before the 
turnips. Let them be well incorporated with the soil, and 
you need not fear getting a good heavy crop of sound winter 
food. But this manurial seed-bed, although it must in time 
be given up or wonderfully modified, has many strong and 
energetic advocates ; consequently it will be well to show how 
it may be used least injuriously. Foremost stands the liquid 
drill, where pure mineral substances are used. These chemical 
salts, by the time they get into the soil, being diluted to over 
one hundred times their bulk, the practical results are good 
crops of sounder food. The water drill, however, is not ap¬ 
plicable to all situations, and the dry drill is not practicable 
to dilute them to the required extent, but might be so con¬ 
structed if some mechanical appliances were adapted to mix 
these substances thoroughly in the seed-bed with the soil as 
they are deposited from the drill, three hundredweight of 
these mineral salts to the acre requiring to be mixed with 
about fifteen tons of soil to bring them to the like condition 
of dilution afforded by the liquid drill. If these mineral 
salts are not entirely divested of poisonous acid and organic 
substances, and diluted to over one hundred times their bulk, 
they had better be sown broadcast if we wish diseased turnips 
to be the exception, not the rule, which is no slight consider¬ 
ation in the present day, when we consider their effects upon 
sheep. The diseases of sheep have been increasing in a cor- 
