ol4 
peds; and in their season, the tender shoots are 
as agreeable to man as those of any other plant. 
The turnip also, when dried and preserved, is 
better than when green; for it becomes hard, 
and, when kept in earth, it remains good almost 
to the season of the next crop, and therefore is a 
constant food. The people on the other side of 
the Po reckon this plant the third in goodness, or 
inferior only to grapes and corn. It is dressed 
in a variety of ways for use at our tables, and 
when mixed with mustard, is preserved for culi- 
nary purposes throughout the year. Besides its 
natural colour, it may be stained purple and five 
other colours; and it admits of being more conve- 
niently and variously dressed in this way than any 
otherculinary plant.” “ Bothrapaand napus,” says 
Columella, “ may properly be classed with pulse; 
for both are used as food by country people. The 
rapa, however, is the more useful of the two; for 
it yields a greater amount of produce and serves 
for food, not only to men, but also to oxen, espe- 
cially in Gaul, where it is used for feeding cattle 
in winter.” 
At what time the field cultivation of turnips 
was begun in Britain is not known; but it seems 
to have been, if not introduced, at least either 
reintroduced or powerfully stimulated, from Flan- 
ders, and to have taken special root in Norfolk, 
about two centuries ago; and it possibly was 
retained in Flanders, throughout all the middle 
ages, as an heirloom from the ancient Gauls. 
Worlidge, in his Mystery of Husbandry, printed 
in 1669-81, says, “In Holland, they slice their 
turnips with the tops, and rape-seed cakes and 
grains, &c., and therewith make mashes for the 
cows, and give it them warm, which the cows 
eat like hogs.” And he complains of the very 
great neglect of all similar uses of turnips in the 
farm-economy of England, and remarks, “ Al- 
though turnips be usually nourished in gardens, 
and be properly a garden-plant, yet are they, to 
the very great advantage of the husbandman, 
sown in his fields in several places in England, 
not only for culinary uses, as about London and 
other great cities, but also for the food of cattle.” 
The field cultivation of turnips in Norfolk is 
commonly said to have been introduced by Lord 
Townshend, but seems really to have existed be- 
fore his period; and though long confined to only 
a very few individuals, it afterwards spread into 
considerably extensive favour, and was at length 
greatly improved by incorporation with the row 
method of sowing according to the system of 
Tull. The earliest kinds of turnips grown were 
the oldest and worst varieties of the round or 
depressed; and these, in common with all the 
newer sorts of the same group, continue to the 
present day to be often popularly called Norfolk 
turnips,—though the kinds now cultivated in 
Norfolk are equal in diversity and value to at 
least the average of the kinds grown in the best 
of the other agricultural districts of the king- 
dom. “The usual mode of sowing turnips both 
TURNIP. 
in Flanders and in Norfolk,” said the Rev. Mr. 
Rham, about ten years ago, “was broadcast ; 
and as the labourers in both countries became 
very expert in hoeing them out at regular dis- 
tances, this mode was long preferred. In fact, 
the cultivation of turnips in rows is scarcely 
practised at all in Flanders; and, notwithstand- 
ing its evident superiority in respect to quantity 
of produce and economy of labour, it cannot be 
said to be yet universally adopted in Norfolk,— 
so slowly does every agricultural improvement 
spread among the great mass of farmers 
The cultivation of turnips in drills, though in- 
troduced by Tull, was early and long known, and 
in some districts is even yet known, under the 
name of the Northumberland system. Tull gave 
his favourite horse-hoeing operations to turnips, 
not as in modern practice chiefly before sowing, 
but mostly or wholly after sowing ; and he appears 
to have used principally intervals of three feet. 
About the year 1745, Mr. Craik of Arbigland, in 
Dumfries-shire, became the earliest cultivator of 
drilled turnips on the Scottish borders ; about ten 
years later, Philip Howard, Hsq., of Corby, became 
the earliest cultivator of them in Cumberland, 
and grew them for some time at intervals of four 
feet, and afterwards at intervals of two feet; and 
nearly at the same time, Mr. Pringle, near Cold- 
stream, in Berwickshire, cultivated turnips in 
drills, at 35 feet distance, and likewise drilled his 
grain crops,—following in both cases the general 
principles of Tull. “At this time,” says the 
General Report of Scotland, ‘ William Dawson, 
Esq., of Graden, an intelligent and successful 
farmer in Roxburghshire, after some residence in 
the county of Norfolk, where he had attentively 
studied the system of alternate husbandry, 
adopted the practice of Mr. Pringle, in regard to 
the cultivation of turnips, in preference to the 
mode which he had seen practised in that cele- 
brated county. Mr. Dawson began the drilled 
turnip husbandry in 1764, on an extensive scale, 
growing nearly 100 acres yearly. He ultimately 
fixed upon 30 inches as the best interval for the 
purpose, after repeated trials both of broader and 
narrower; and his practice has been universally 
followed in all the border counties 
The turnip husbandry greatly aided the transi- 
tion from the barbarous agricultural usages of 
the middle ages to the enlightened ones of the 
present day; and is now well known to every 
good farmer to be the sheet anchor or sine qua 
non of the modern alternate and convertible hus- 
bandry. See the article Roration or Crops. 
“he introduction of turnips into the husbandry 
of Britain,” remarks Brown in his Treatise on 
Rural Affairs, “occasioned one of those revolu- 
tions in the rural art which are constantly oc- 
curring among husbandmen. Before the intro- 
duction of this root, it was impossible to cultivate 
light soils successfully, or to devise suitable ro- 
tations for cropping them with advantage. It 
was likewise a difficult task to support live-stock 
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