PRACTICAL PAPERS—ROOT CROPS. 
359 
ROOT CROPS. 
From a Lecture delivered at the IllinoiB Industrial University, January, 1669, 
BY JONATHAN PERIAM. 
Root crops may be classified as follows : First, those having 
long tapering taip roots, more or less fusiform, as the beet, car¬ 
rot, parsnip, radish, turnip and salsify or vegetable oyster. 
Second, tuberous rooted plants, as the common potato, the 
sweet potato, Chinese potato or Japanese yam, the chufa or 
earth almond, and the artichoke, and bulbous roots, as the on¬ 
ion, leek, shallot, garlic, etc. These, therefore, hold before en¬ 
lightened nations a most important place as sustainers of ani¬ 
mal life, increasing always in importance according to the den¬ 
sity of the population. Only within the last one hundred 
years have they occupied their proper place in the economy of 
animal life and the rotation in farm cultivation, and have en¬ 
abled Great Britain, especially, to keep pace measurably in her 
agricultural development with her commercial and manufac¬ 
turing interests. 
The.rudest form of husbandry known is the occupation of a 
herdsman, but one remove from savage life, inasmuch as the 
savage hunts, kills and eats wild animals, and the herdsman 
breeds, slaughters and eats domesticated or half-wild cattle. 
From thence, by another step, we have the cultivation of 
cereals, then the planting of vineyards and orchards, and lastly 
comes in the cultivation of roots, herbs and flowers. A com¬ 
bination of these arts results in agriculture, horticulture being 
but a branch thereof, (the poetry of agriculture,) pomology, ar¬ 
boriculture, floriculture, etc., being subdivisions again of hor¬ 
ticulture, just as the breeding and fattening of stock, or the cul¬ 
tivation of the cereals, or of the grasses for hay, are subdivis- 
