we 
TURNIP. 
through the winter and spring months; and the 
practice of feeding cattle and sheep for market, 
during these inclement seasons, was hardly ever 
thought of or attempted, unless in a few in- 
stances, where a full stock of hay was provided. 
The benefits, therefore, which are derived from 
turnip husbandry are manifold and of great 
magnitude. Light soils are now cultivated with 
facility and profit, by which abundance of food 
is provided for man and beast ; the earth is turned 
to the uses for which it is physically calculated ; 
and, by being suitably cleaned and fertilized by 
this preparatory crop, a bed is provided for grass- 
seeds, in which they prosper with greater vigour 
than after any other mode of preparation.” 
The Swedish turnip, too, came into use at a 
fine juncture for completing the great advantages 
which the field cultivation of the common tur- 
nip had begun to confer. It was introduced from 
Germany to England about the middle of last 
century, and from England to Scotland in 1766; 
so that it did not come in till a period of the new 
husbandry when its value could be appreciated, 
and did not lag so long behind as to let the de- 
fective power of the common turnip for spring- 
feeding and late winter-feeding become hope- 
lessly discouraging. It soon proved itself of 
extraordinary service to intelligent and enter- 
prising farmers who had adopted the alternate 
husbandry, by enabling them with tolerable cer- 
tainty to fill the wide and critical gap in the 
supply of food for stock in late winter and early 
spring, or to keep their stock in full numbers 
and in pretty good condition during the trying 
season between the exhaustion of the common 
turnip and the commencement of summer feed- 
ing,—so that they were no longer under the 
severe alternative of being obliged either to force 
off their feeding stock to market at the exhaus- 
tion of the turnip, bring what price they might, 
or to carry them on at a vast expense by means 
of oil-cake, hay, bean-meal, and other costly arti- 
cles of food; and the Swedish turnip, at the 
same time, offered a ready source, which eventu- 
ally came to be well understood and appreciated, 
of forming those valuable hybrids between it and 
the common turnip which now occupy so large 
and advantageous a place in the economy of a 
great proportion of extensive farms. 
But while the turnip-husbandry rapidly ef- 
fected a revolution, and has long been achieving 
wonders, in some parts of Britain, it has been 
dismally neglected, or even continues to be re- 
garded with indifference or dislike in others. 
Persons who live in districts where the crop is 
considered so essential that the operations of a 
farm could not be conducted to profit without it, 
will scarcely believe that in many parts of the 
kingdom, even at this date, turnips are grown 
only by amateurs, or those who are supposed to 
be making experiments; whilst the expense is 
considered to be too great for tenants to encoun- 
ter who pay high rents for their land. The fact 
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is, that many farmers, looking only to present 
consequences, begrudge the manure required for 
this crop, and rather apply it to stimulate a crop 
of corn which they can turn into money at the 
nearest market,—forgetting that the green crop 
is not only the procurer of future ones, but that 
the root is available for fattening sheep and cat- 
tle, or, if applied to the store stock, of keeping 
them not only in good condition, but in increased 
numbers. In Ireland, too, throughout the greater 
part of which the turnip husbandry continues 
still to be unappreciated, absurd and inveterate 
prejudices are entertained against it in favour 
of the wretched system of a continual growing 
of mere corn and potatoes. “ Even in the vici- 
nity of bogs and mountains, where the means of 
raising ashes, in which turnips delight as a 
pabulum, are on the spot,’ remarks Martin 
Doyle, “they are never grown by a mere practi- 
cal husbandman, though their culture does not 
necessarily interfere with the raising of the more 
essentially necessary potato crop. Whence is 
this? Potatoes, wherever manure can be raised, 
are in the first case considered more profitable, 
from the demand for human food in countries 
where the consumption of grain is so inconsider- 
able; secondly, from the mistaken notion that 
potatoes are more remunerative as food for cat- 
tle; thirdly, from the conviction that, however 
extensively sown, they would be stolen as a 
dainty for the human palate. The first and 
second objections require no discussion, and the 
third is of no weight. The petty depredations 
of women and of urchins cease when the novelty 
of the crop wears off. The same objection once 
operated against the culture of turnips, and of 
beans too, in Great Britain. In parts of Ireland, 
at this moment, where beans are systematically 
and abundantly cultivated, the same complaint 
was made by the farmer on their first introduc- 
tion, and similar difficulty would be at first ex- 
perienced in those places where beans, as a field 
crop, are now utterly unknown, and the purely 
mental association of boiled garden beans and 
bacon might lead to the mistake that raw tick 
beans must also supply excellent and delicate 
fare. Let turnips once become common in cul- 
ture, and they will not be improperly meddled 
with, even in the most dishonest localities. 
What has not turnip culture effected for Eng- 
land? What has not the same system wrought 
in Scotland ?” 
The Preparation of the Land for Turnips.— 
All comparatively dry soils, from the poorest sand 
and gravel up to the richest free loams, are more 
or less suitable for common turnips; while either 
light soils on a retentive bottom or clayey soils 
upon any sort of bottom whatever are apt to 
make them fail, especially in dry seasons; and 
soils of a comparatively heavy character, or those 
near akin to the best wheat and bean soils, are 
the most suitable for Swedish turnips. Yet al- 
most all kinds of soils which are capable of 
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