as I conceive, much neglected by most farmers, who too frequently place their cattle from hand to mouth for food. A very common practice is to employ one or two carts an afternoon's yoking, to bring in as many turnips as will serve the cattle for two or three days at most, and these are brought in with the tops on, after much time has been spent in the field in waiting for the pulling and tailing of the turnips. This slovenly mode of providing provender for cattle should be abandoned. It should be considered a work of the first importance in winter to provide cattle with turnips in the very best condition, independent of the vicissitudes of the weather; and this can only be done by storing a considerable quantity of them in good weather, to be used when the weather changes to a worse state. When a store is once made, the mind becomes easy under the certainty of having, let the weather prove ever so unpropitious, plenty of good food provided at home for the cattle, and having such a provision does not prevent you taking supplies from the field as long as the weather permits the ground to be carted upon with impunity, to be immediately consumed, or to augment the store. How much better for all parties-for yourself, for men, horses, and cattle, to be always provided with plenty of turnips, instead of being obliged to go to the field for every day's supply, and perhaps under the most uncomfortable circumstances! I believe few farmers would refuse their assent to this truth; and yet, how many violate it in their own practice! The excuses usually made for pursuing the ordinary practice are, that there is no time to store turnips when the potato-land should be ploughed up and sown with wheat; that the beasts are yet doing well enough upon the pasture; and that it is a pity to pull the turnips while they continue to grow. It is proper to bestow all the time required to plough and sow the potato-land; and, after a late harvest, these may have to be done after the pasture has failed; but such an occurrence as the last being the exception to the usual condition of the crops and seasons, ought not to be adduced as an excuse applicable at all times; and as to the other excuses, founded upon the growing state of the turnips and the rough state of the pastures, they are of no force when adduced in compensation for the risk of loss likely to be incurred by a low condition in the stock. Rather than incur such a risk, give up the rough pasture to the sheep, or delay the working and sowing of the potato-land, or sacrifice a portion of the weight of a small part of the turnip crop by pulling it before reaching entire maturity. As for sheep, they are never at a loss for food, being constantly surrounded with turnips, as long as the ground is bare.

(1235.) The storing of turnips is very well done in this way. Let a

piece of lea ground, convenient of access to carts, be chosen near the steading for the site of the store, and, if that be in an adjoining field, on a 15-feet ridge, so much the better, provided the ridge runs N. and S. Fig. 213 represents the form of the turnip-store. The cart with the topped and tailed turnips is backed to the spot of the ridge chosen to begin the store, and there emptied of its contents. The ridge being 15 feet wide, the store should not exceed 10 feet wide at the bottom, to allow a space of at least 2 feet on each side towards the open furrow of the ridge, for the fall and conveyance of water. The turnips may be piled up to the height of 4 feet; but will not easily lie to 5 feet on that width of base. In this way, the store may be formed of any length; but

it is more desirable to make two or three stores on adjoining ridges, than a very long one on the same ridge, as its farthest end may be too far removed for using a wheel-barrow to remove the stored turnips. Assorted straw, that is, drawn out lengthwise, is put from 4 to 6 inches thick, above the turnips for thatch, and kept down by means of strawropes, arranged lozenge-shaped, and fastened to pegs driven in a slanting direction in the ground, along the base of the straw, as may be distinctly seen in the figure. Or a spading of earth, taken out of the furrow, may be placed upon the ends of the ropes, to keep them down. The straw is not intended to keep out either rain or air,-for both are requisite to preserve the turnips fresh,-but to protect them from frost, which causes rottenness, and from drought, which shrivels turnips. To avoid frost, the end, and not the side, of the store should be presented to the north, from whence frost may be expected to come. If the ground. chosen is so flat, and the open furrows are so nearly on a level with the ridges, as that a dash of rain would overflow the bottom of the store,

furrow-slice should, in that case, be taken out of the open furrows of the ridges with the plough, or a gaw cut made with the spade, and the earth used to keep down the ropes.

(1236.) When the turnips are to be used from the store, the straw on the south end is removed, as seen in fig. 213, and a cart, or the cattleman's capacious light wheel-barrow, backed to it; and, after the requisite quantity for the day has been taken out, it should be replaced over the mouth of the store.

(1237.) Some people evince a desire to place the turnip-store in the stackyard, on account, perhaps, of the straw; but there is not likely to be sufficient room, especially at the beginning of winter, for the turning of carts in an ordinary-sized stackyard. I have seen turnips stored up between two stacks, in the early part of the season, but only as a temporary expedient, when there was a scarcity of straw.

(1238.) This is not the only form of store that will preserve turnips fresh and good for a considerable time. I have seen turnips heaped about 3 feet in height, quite flat on the top, and covered with loose straw, keep very well. Other plans have been devised and tried, such as to pull them from the field in which they have grown, and set them upright with their tops on in another field, in a furrow made with the plough, and then cover the bulbs with the next furrow-slice; and another plan is to pull the turnips as in the former case, and carry them to a bare or lea field, and set them upright beside one another, as close as they can stand, with their tops and roots on. No doubt, both these latter plans will keep turnips fresh enough, and an area of 1 acre will, by these methods, contain the growth of 4 or 5 acres of the field in which they had grown; but turnips are certainly not so secure from frost in those positions as in a store; and after the trouble of lifting and carrying them has been incurred, it would be as easy to take them to a proper store at once, where they would be near at hand, and save the farther trouble of bringing them again from the second field. And even if they were so set in a field adjoining the steading, they would occupy a much larger space than any store. Objectionable as these plans are compared to triangular or flat-topped stores, they are better than storing turnips in houses, where they never fail to sprout on the top and become rotten at the bottom of the bin. Piling them against a high wall, and thatching them like a to-fall, preserves them very little better than in an outhouse. Stored in close houses, turnips never fail to rot at the bottom of the heap; and the heat engendered thereby not only endangers the rest of the heap, but superinduces on its surface a premature vegetation, very exhausting to the substance of the bulbs. Turnips put into pits dug in

the ground, and covered with earth, have failed to be preserved. A plan has been recommended to drive stakes 24 feet high into the ground, and wattle them together with brushwood, making an enclosure of 3 sides, in the interior of which the turnips are packed, and piled up to a point, and thatched, like the store in fig. 213; and the turnips are represented as keeping fresh in such a structure until June; and one advantage attending this plan is said to be, that "where room is rather limited in the rick-yard, one pile of this description will contain 3 times as much as one of those placed on the ground of a triangular shape; and the saving of thatch is also considerable." But, as it appears to me, the providing of stakes and the trouble of wattling around an enclosure will far more than counterbalance any advantage of space or saving of straw for thatch, compared with the mode I have described in fig. 213; and besides all these inconveniences attending the plan, there is no necessity whatever for having a turnip-store in a rick-yard.

(1239.) With regard to storing mangel-würzel, this plan seems unexceptionable. "It should be stored early in November. The best and cheapest mode is to build it up against some high wall, contiguous to your beasts' sheds, not more than 7 or 8 feet deep, carried up square to a certain height, and then tapering in a roof to the top of the wall; protect the sides with thatched hurdles, leaving an interval between the roots and the hurdles, which fill up with dry stubble (straw); cover the roof with about 1 foot of the same, and then thatch it, so as to conduct all moisture well over the hurdles placed as a protection to the sides. In pulling the plants, care should be taken that as little injury be inflicted upon them as possible. Cleansing with a knife should on no account be permitted, and it is safer to leave some of the leaf on, than, by cutting it too close to impair the crown of the root. The drier the season is for storing the better; although I have never found the roots decayed in the heap by the earth, which, in wet weather, has been brought from the field adhering to them."+ Carrots may be stored exactly in the same manner, and so may parsnips. Cabbages are stored by being shoughed into the soil, or hung up by the stems, with the heads downwards, in a shed. As cabbages are very exhausting to the soil, the plants should be pulled up by the roots when they are gathered, and the stems not merely cut over with a hook or knife, because they will sprout again.

(1240.) All these modes of storing turnips apply to all the varieties of the root usually cultivated, and which are much more numerous than

* Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, vol. ii., p. 228.

+ Ibid. vol. ii. p. 300.

necessary. Mr Lawson enumerates and describes no fewer than 46 varieties cultivated in the field; namely, 11 of Swedes, 17 of yellow, and 18 of white,* the colour names being derived as much from the colour of the flesh as that of the skin. One kind from each of these classes seems almost requisite to be cultivated on every farm, although the yellow is omitted in some districts, and the Swedes in others. Where Swedes are omitted, they have never been cultivated, and where the yellow is the favourite, the Swedes are unknown; for where they are known, their culture is never relinquished, and their extension is treading hard upon the yellow, and even curtailing the boundary of the white. The white varieties come earliest into use, and will always be esteemed on account of their rapid growth and early maturity, though unable to withstand the severest effects of frost. It is they which first support both cattle and sheep, being ready for use as soon as the pasture fails; and in storing them, only such a quantity should be prepared as will last to the end of the year. The yellows then follow, and last for about 2 months, that is, to the end of February or thereabouts; and the same rule of storing a quantity for a specified time is followed in regard to them as with the whites. Then the Swedes finish the course, and should last until the grass is able to support the cattle, that is, to the end of May or beginning of June, to which time they will continue fresh in store, if stored in proper time and in the manner recommended above; and the most proper time for storing them is before any vegetation makes its appearance on them in spring, which is generally about the end of March or beginning of April.

(1241.) Of all the 18 varieties of white turnips, I should say that the White Globe (Brassica rapa, depressa, alba, of De Candolle) a, fig. 214, is the best for early maturity, sweetness, juiciness, size of root, weight of crop, and elegance of form. Its form is nearly globular, as its name indicates; skin smooth, somewhat oily, fine, and perfectly white; neck of the top and tap-root small; leaves long (frequently 18 inches), upright, and luxuriant. Though the root does not feel particularly heavy in the hand, it does not emit a hollow sound when struck; its flesh is somewhat firm, fine-grained, though distinctly exhibiting fibres radiating from the centre; the juice easily exudes, and the rind is thin. Its specific gravity was determined by Dr Skene Keith at 0.840; and its nutritive properties by Sir Humphry Davy, at 42 parts in 1000; of which were, of mucilage 7, of sugar 34, and of albumen or gluten 1.f Mr Sinclair

Lawson's Agriculturists' Manual, p. 237; and Supplement, p. 49.

Davy's Agricultural Chemistry, p. 135, edition of 1839.