to inquire if the increase at other markets has been the same, and from all accounts I am convinced of the affirmative.  Now as we have ample proofs from the statistical accounts of our husbandry, that less corn has not been grown in the same period, we shall naturally be inclined to give the merit of this increase to the introduction of the Turnip husbandry, which, although it is now become so general, is, comparatively speaking, but in its infancy; and it is from that branch of our agriculture that has sprung the culture of the great variety of fodder of the description which I am now about to explain.

And here it may not prove amiss to observe to the botanical student, should he hereafter be destined to travel, that by making himself thus acquainted with the nature of such vegetables, he may have it in his power to render great benefit to society by the introduction of others of still superior virtues, for the use both of man and the brute creation.  When Sir Walter Raleigh undertook his expedition to South America, the object of which failed, he had the good fortune from his taste for botany to render to his country, and to the world at large, a more essential service, by the introduction of one single vegetable, than was ever achieved by the military exploits performed before or since that period [Footnote:  The Potatoe was introduced by Sir Walter Raleigh, on his return from the River Plate, in the year 1586.].  It has not only been the means of increasing the wealth and strength of nations, but more than once prevented a famine in this country when suffering from a scarcity of bread-corn and when most of the ports which could afford us a supply were shut by the ambition of a powerful enemy.

63.  Brassica Napus.  Turnip.—­Turnips afford the best feed for sheep in the autumn and winter months.  It is usual to sow them as a preparatory crop for Barley, and now very frequently for a crop of Spring Wheat.  Turnips are not easily raised but where some kind of manure is used to stimulate the land.  In dry seasons the crop is often destroyed by the ravages of a small beetle, which perforates the cotyledons of the plants, and destroys the crop on whole fields in a few hours.

Many remedies against this evil are enumerated in our books on husbandry.  The best preventative, however, appears to be the putting manure on the ground in a moist state and sowing the seeds with it, in order to excite the young plant to grow rapidly; for the insect does not hurt it when the rough leaf is once grown.  I have this season seen a fine field of Turnips, sown mixt with dung out of a cart and ploughed in ridges.  The seeds which were not too deeply buried grew and escaped the fly; when scarcely a field in the same district escaped the ravages of that insect.  Turnips are sown either broad-cast or in drills.  It takes about four pounds of seed per acre in the first mode, and about half the quantity in the second.