except in very open weather, is to have a few days consumption in the barn, you can preserve them like potatoes in pits, if there be want of house room. Sheep are frequently fed in the field on turnips, and the advantage of this plan, in manuring light soils, is so great, that very valuable crops of barley and wheat have been taken from the most porous soils after turnips so consumed. Swedish turnips and Mangel Wurzel, are eaten greedily by horses. The best way is to steam or boil them after they are sliced, as no root requires more boiling than the Swedish turnip. You can easily save your own seed (of which 5 or 6lbs. are required for a plantation acre) by transplanting in November those of the best form, and cutting off the tops; they will ripen their seed in the following July. That you may see the probable produce of an acre of turnips, and its great superiority over the potatoes, for cattle feeding, I subjoin a table of weights, &c. from Mr. Curwen's agricultural hints: his experiments were made on an English acre of rich sandy loam, which is only 30 perches more than half an Irish plantation acre: Yellow, 34 16 6 8 6 1 Cabbages of the 100-head kind, 26 10 0 0 The following were the weights of some turnips exhibited in Camolin last October, and grown, I believe, by Lord Courtown and John Brownrigg, Esq. Red Norfolk-one turnip washed and free from tops and fibres, weighed 131bs. 12oz. and measured 32 inches in circumference, and 16 inches in depth. White Norfolk, weight 11lbs. Swedish ditto, weight 9lbs.; measured 27 inches circumference. Now, since an average, on the poorest lands, of 20 tons of globe turnips per Irish acre might be expected -which is three times the probable weight of potatoes on the same ground-it would surely be most desirable to cultivate them generally for your cattle. There is an objection, however, and one not readily got over, where partial experiments are made, and that is, the plunder to which turnip fields are exposed in a country where men, women, and children, gnaw them with avidity. Let every farmer sow them, and then robbing or begging them will cease. It is the novelty and rareness of the crop which lead people to devour them. A little experience in the way of indigestion, or, in homelier language, a smart fit of gripes once felt in consequence of eating raw turnips, will soon put a stop to the practice of stealing them by children; for in this honest country few grown-up people will run away with them. The case is similar to that of bean growing; in the Barony of Forth, where it is very frequent, the crops arrive at maturity without loss; they are familiar to the natives-nobody there improperly meddles with them; but if I should sow a field of beans at Ballyorly, where they have never yet been seen, my young neighbours would save me the trouble of pulling a single bean. Sow turnips every one of you, next June, and you will not lose many stones of them by theft and sow a few Swedes in May, and Aberdeens, as well as some of the globe kind later, in order to have a successive supply for late spring feeding the following year. No. XIII. Beans-to be sown in drills and kept free from weeds. On weeding land, poor Pat small care bestows, BEANS are much cultivated in the Barony of Forth, where a compost of sea weed, sand, and earth, is easily prepared, and where the soil is peculiarly favourable to them, but I believe they are seldom or never sown in drills there, except on Mr. Meadowe's model farm at Hermitage. The broadcast plan is a very slovenly one, requiring a greater quantity of seed, giving less produce, and affording infinitely less benefit to the succeeding crop of corn than the drill method. But I have seen good crops on beds, about four feet wide, which must be a good method in moist ground. The book to which I have before referred, (A Report on the Agriculture of Flanders, by the Rev. Thomas Radcliff,) supplies us with the following accurate and satisfactory information derived from an experiment made to ascertain the difference of result between the drill and broadcast management. The gentleman who introduced the drill culture, in the part of Flanders alluded to, from a proof of its superiority, prevailed upon his tenants to follow his practice there, and I hope that Mr. Meadowe's spirited example will have equal success in all parts of this country where beans are grown, A French word, signifying without Comparison between drilled and broadcast beans. M. Weilande, of Ostend, having heard of the drill husbandry of some parts of England, was resolved to compare it with the broadcast method under his own particular inspection; to this experiment he gave up a certain portion of land which had been manured the year before for winter barley; this piece was of equal quality, had been equally manured, and had borne an equal crop. The seed and produce were as follows: The barley, which was sown afterwards, produced after the broadcast beans, little more than 10 bls. per acre, and that sown on the drilled part produced more than 15 bls. per acre. The soil of the broadcast part was hard, difficult to be worked, and covered with weeds; that of the drilled part was clean, loose, and in fine tilth, which accounts for the superiority of the barley crop in the following year on the latter part; the grain was much finer also on the drilled part, and the ground was perfectly clean. The superiority of the drill husbandry over the broadcast in this instance is very striking, not only in the saving of seed and in the increase of produce, but in the more important circumstance of preparing the ground for the following crop in such a manner as to render that also more productive; and it is remarkable, that from this improved tilth by the drill method, the number of sheaves is not only greater, but their produce also is proportionably increased, for in this instance less than 53 sheaves of the drilled beans produced as much as 57 sheaves of broadcast beans yielded. In like manner, with respect to the barley of the following year, 34 sheaves from that part which had been under the broadcast beans the year before, did not produce more than 27 sheaves yielded from the drilled part. In the Barony of Forth, where, from the abundance of sea-weed, and excellence of the soil, much greater crops of beans and barley are produced than appear in the above calculation, the advantage of drilling would be proportionably greater. The truth is, that beans do well in the latter place, in spite of the farmer, owing to the quality of the land, and facility of manure, but under good management they would be most luxuriant. But I need not travel all the way to Flanders for example of drilled beans-for in Scotland they are universally drilled, fostered with the utmost care, and much more productive than in the other country—it is not uncommon to see in Scotland 20 acres under the drill beans, in a single field, without even a solitary weed among them. I recollect having seen some old and young women employed with hoes in a very large field of beans, which appeared to me perfectly clean. Curiosity led me to watch their operations, first at some distance, and afterwards to walk up to them— but I must first tell you that all these women, though without shoes and stockings, had their heads covered with large bonnets of English nankin, completely shading their faces and necks from sun and wind; they also wore very smart looking bed-gowns, and linsey-wolsey petticoats, and the younger ones had their hair in paper curls. Pray, my dear, said I to the youngest and best looking of them, (though, to tell the honest truth, she would have been considered a very ugly girl in this country,) pray, said I to this Scotch beauty-what are you doing? weeding, Sir-weeding, my dear! where are the weeds? After hoeing close to the beans for a little time, she pulled up a very small piece of scutch or couch grass, which she held up in triumph, as much as to say, "what a pretty piece of business it would be to leave this in the ground!" And in fact these women were all employed to look for weeds under ground, not sent out, as among us, to relieve a half strangled crop from an overburthening tribe of weeds; for the Scotch well know by experience, "that a stitch in time saves nine," and that, if |