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PERKINS
AGRICULTURAL LIBRARY
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
SOUTHAMPTON
THE
CULTIVATED PLANTS
THE FARM.
fflbe llegumes, tfce ffirai'ns, an& tljc (JBsculfitts,
COMPRISING
THE SCIENTIFIC DESCRIPTION AND
CULTIVATED USE OF
WHEAT
OATS
PEAS
BAPE
RYE
VETCHES
TURNIPS
CARROTS
BARLEY
BEANS
CABBAGES
PARSNIPS
BEETROOT AND POTATO.
By JOHN DONALDSON,
PROFESSOR OF AGRICULTURE AND BOTANY, HODDESDEN, HERTS ;
Author of a Treatise on Manures and Grasses;
Editor of the 5th and 6th Editions of Bayldon on Rents and Tillages,
and the British Far7ners , Almanack.
LONDON :
R. G.ROOMBRIDGE & SONS,
PATEENOSTEl! ROW.
1847.
CONTENTS.
' 4
t
I. THE CEREAL PLANTS.
Page.
1. Wheat - i
2. Bye ---------- 23
3. Barley - - 31
4. Oats - - 43
II. THE LEGUMINOUS PLANTS.
1. Vetches - 48
2. Beans - - 53
3. Peas ---------- 59
IH. THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
1. Turnips - 66
2. Cabbages - - 94
3. Rape and Cole ------- 109
4. Beet - - - - 110
5. Carrots --------- 118
6. Parsnips - -- -- -- --123
IV. THE TUBEROUS PLANTS.
Potato -------
127
THE
CULTIVATED PLANTS OF
THE FARM.
The Cultivated Plants of the Farm are natu-
rally divided into four sections:— I. The Cereal
Plants:— II. The Leguminous :— III. The Escu-
lent: and— IV. The Tuherous. The first section
contains, Wheat, Eye, Barley, and Oats; the
second, Vetches, Beans, and Peas; the third em-
braces Turnips, Cabbages, and the varieties of
each, and Beet, Carrots, and Parsnips; and the
fourth comprehends the single plant of Potato,
being the only tuberous-rooted plant that is
cultivated in Britain.
I. THE CEREAL PLANTS.
1. Wheat.
The word Wheat is derived from hpeate,
Saxon; weyde, Dutch; hwaitei, Ma3So-Gothic;
B
2
THE CEREAL PLANTS.
hweite, Icelandic, from " hwit," albus (Seren-
ius). It is the grain of which bread is chiefly
made.
The generic name of Wheat is Triticum, a
word very satisfactorily derived by Varro himself
from tritum (Latin), ground or rubbed, because
of the manner in which its grain is prepared for
the food of mankind. It belongs to the class and
order Triandria Digynia of Linmeus; and the
natural order Graminece of Jussieu.
Generic Character: — Calyx, a common
receptacle elongated into a spike. Glume, two-
valved, sub-triflorous ; valves, ovate, bluntish,
concave. Corolla, two-valved, nearly equal, size
of the calyx ; exterior valve, ventricose, blunt
with a point ; interior valve, flat. Nectary, two-
leaved, leaflets acute, fibrous at the base. Sta-
mina, filaments three, capillary. Anthers, ob-
long, forked. Pistil, germen, turbinate. Styles,
two, capillary, reflexed. Stigma, feathered. Pe-
ricarp, none; corolla fosters the seed, opens
and drops it. Seed, one, ovate, oblong, blunt at
both ends, convex on one side, grooved on the
other.
Essential Character -.—Calyx, two-valved,
solitary, sub-triflorous, or many-flowered, on a
flexuose-toothed rachis. Corolla, blunt with a
point.
WHEAT.
3
Botanists have experienced very considerable
difficulty in distinguishing this genus from
Secale or common rye. They both agree in
the transverse or lateral position of their bi-valve
calyx; by which position the side of each spike-
let is parallel to the common receptacle, not, as
in Lolium, contrary. The greater number of
florets in Triticum, which are only two in
Secale, is the only technical distinction. The
outer valve of the corolla of the genus Triti-
cum is often terminated by a long awn; but this
appendage varies, even in the same species.
The genus Triticum is divided into two sec-
tions: — I. Boot Annual — II. Boot Perennial.
The former comprehends the cultivated varie-
ties ; the latter, the plants, which are called
permanent wheat grasses. Some writers add a
third section of annual grasses.
The annual roots comprehend the grains, or
corn, and are seven in number : — 1 . Triticum asti-
vum; Summer, or Spring Wheat. — 2. Triticum
hybernum; Winter, or Lammas Wheat. — 3. Triti-
cum compositum, or Many-spiked Wheat 4. Tri-
cum turgidum ; Gray-pollard, or Duck-bill Wheat.
— 5.TriticumPolonicum; Polish, or Poland Wheat.
6. Triticum spelt a, or Spelt Wheat. — 7. Triticum
monococcum, or One-grained Wheat.
1. Spring Wheat. Calyx, four-flowered, tu-
mid, smooth, with imbricated awn; supposed to
be a native of Siberia. This wheat may be
B 2
4
THE CEREAL PLANTS.
supposed to be nothing more than a permanent
variety of Winter Wheat, obtained by accidental
circumstances.
'2. Winter, or Lammas Wheat. Calyces, four-
flowered, ventricose, even, imbricate, with little
or no awn; ears, or spikes long, with the grains
ranged in four rows, and imbricate; the chaff
smooth, ventricose, or bellied, and not terminated
by awns, or beards. Wheat has, however, occa-
sionally short awns, but not the length of those
in Spring Wheat. Native country unknown; the
root consists of downy fibres. Stems, one or
more, erect, straight, from three to five feet
high, round, jointed, smooth, leafy. Leaves,
linear, pointed, flat, many-ribbed, rough, entire,
rather glaucous. Stipula, jagged, bearded. Spike,
solitary, two or three inches long, dense, two-
ranked, smooth; joints of the common stalk,
bearded. Glumes, smooth. Calyx in the upper
part of the spike, with a more elongated point.
Corolla of the upper spikelets, frequently more
or less awned.
Wheat being exposed to the severity of win-
ter, its roots are most wonderfully disposed to
withstand the inclemency of the season. The
first, or seminal root, is pushed out at the same
time with the germ; and that, together with the
meal, nourishes the plant, until it has formed the
crown. When this has become sufficiently large,
it detaches a number of small fibres, which push
WHEAT.
5
themselves obliquely downwards. These are the
coronal roots. A small pipe preserves the com-
munication between them and the seminal roots.
It makes an essential part of the plant, and is
observed to be longer or shorter, according to
the depth at which the seed has been buried.
The crown, however, is always formed just
without the surface; and its place is the same,
whether the grain has been sown deep or super-
ficially. As the increase and fructification of the
plant depend upon the vigorous absorption of
the coronal roots, it is no Wonder that they
should fix themselve so near the surface, where
the soil is always the richest. The stalk, straw,
or culm, as Linnajus calls it, is three feet high on
an average, is jointed, cespitose, or in tufts:
seventy-two stalks have been known to proceed
from one root. The leaves are smooth, three
lines wide, often much more, and on rich grounds
of a very dark green colour. The spikes are
close, weighty, and several inches in length. The
lower flowers are imperfect, as is commonly the
case in this order of plants. The glumes, or
chaff of the calyx are ovate-lanceolate, and end
in a point like a short awn : they each contain
for the most part, four flowers, but sometimes
only three, and often five or six; but one or
more frequently fall off without producing any
grain. The two glumes, or chaffs of the corolla
are equal; but the outer one puts forth an awn a
6
THE CEREAL PLA.NTS.
little below the tip, an inch or two inches in
length; sometimes, however, there is none: the
inner one is hollow, awnless, and two-toothed.
Between these, lies the seed, or grain, which is
villose, and the largest of its congeners. The
nectaries are small, fringed, and silky.
A very great many kinds and subordinate
varieties are comprehended under this most im-
portant and familiar species of wheat, which have
not yet been sufficiently investigated either by
the botanist or the agriculturist. The chief of
these, are the White and Eed Lammas Wheat;
and these varieties will supply our subjects for
description.
3. Triticum compositum, or Many-spiked
Wheat. Spikes, compound. Spikelets, crowded.
Corolla, awned, Native of Egypt, and cultivated
at Naples and in the south of France. The glumes
are smooth. Awns, three or four inches long.
LinnaBus' account of the Many-spiked Wheat is,
that it is allied to the Summer or Spring Wheat,
but that the spike is four times as large, and a
hand in length ; formed of spikelets in two rows,
alternate, approximating from nine to twelve;
the lower ones shorter, but the upper ones single.
Chaff, smooth, keeled. Awns, a hand in length.
It is probably a variety of Triticum hybernum,
rather than of Triticum astivum, as Linnasus
thought.
4. Triticum turgidum, Turgid, or Cone Wheat,
WHEAT.
7
and Barbary Wheat. Calyx, four-flowered, tumid,
villose, imbricated, obtuse, with a short point.
Native country unknown. The corolla varies, with
or without long awns. The silky or villose glumes
alone distinguish this from various awned or
awnless varieties of Triticum hybernum.
5. Triticum Polonicum, Polish, or Poland
Wheat. Calyx, three or four-flowered, pointed,
naked, lanceolate like the corolla, which is
compressed, with a long awn; teeth of the
rachis, bearded. Native country unknown. The
plant grows large, and yields much flour; but,
being very easily lodged by rain, it is not much
regarded by the farmer. There is no doubt of
its being a distinct species. The strength of the
whole plant, its large ears, and long, narrow,
scarcely tumid glumes, readily distinguish it at
first sight. Linnasus defines this Triticum as
having a two-flowered calyx, the character of
Secale ; but Haller asserts the presence of one,
if not two, imperfect florets.
6. Triticum spelta, or Spelt Wheat. Calyx,
imperfectly four-flowered, elliptical, obliquely
pointed, shorter than the long-awned corolla.
Straw, very stout, almost solid. Spikes, strong,
white. Glumes, very glaucous. The origin of
the species is unknown, and the specific character
is unsatisfactory. It is much cultivated in the
southern countries of Europe, and is given to
horses in Spain, when barley is scarce. The
8
THE CEREAL PLANTS.
bread made of it is very dry in quality; but no
kind of flour is better for pastry. In the South
of France, it is called epeante blanche, and is
sown in the Spring. It ripens in July and
August, and requires very strong land. Spelt is
supposed to be the Zea of the Greeks, and the
Far of the Romans.
7. Triticum monococcum, or One-grained "Wheat,
or St. Peter's Corn. Calyx, angular, strongly
toothed, about three-flowered; first floret awned,
intermediate one imperfect. Native country
unknown. It is much cultivated in the most
mountainous parts of Switzerland, where it re-
mains one whole year on the ground. The neat
quadrangular form of the ripe ear, as if carved
out of ivory, is very remarkable. The straw is
hard and firm, and makes excellent thatch. It
is less subject to smut than common wheat. The
flour is of good quality, and much esteemed for
gruels. The bread of it is brown in colour, and
fight in quality.
For the sake of conciseness, the wheats used in
Britain may be reduced to the Red and White
varieties, and the Spring and Lammas kinds.
The latter is thought to have been got from the
former by accidental circumstances, which have
imparted the persistent quality. The awns
constitute no permanent distinction in any gra-
minous plant.
The Red Wheats are more hardy than the White
WHEAT.
9
varieties, and produce more largely on poor
soils, and in late situations; but they are inferior
in value, as the colour would tinge the flour, if
so far driven as white wheats are in the process
of grinding. But the flour of red wheats is of
very fine quality. The different colours are en-
tirely owing to the soils on which they grow;
and it is not a little remarkable, that the grain
sooner changes colour than the chaff or straw.
The soil that is best adapted for the growth of
wheat, is a deep loam inclining to clay, with a
dry firm subsoil. It requires a large portion of
alumen, and also of calcareous matter. Pure
clays do not yield large quantities of wheat; but
the quality is generally good.
A certain portion of nitrogen is essential to
the production of good wheat, that element en-
tering into the composition of the gluten, which
will be found to abound in proportion as nitrogen
exists in the soil, or can be supplied from the
atmosphere. The experiments of Liebig seem to
show, that the nitrogen of the atmosphere will
not enter into the substance of plants, except in
the form of ammonia ; and hence the efficacy of
manures has, of late, been estimated by the quan-
tity of ammonia which they can produce. But
this theory requires much experience for the
confirmation of it. The analysis of the ashes
of grains of wheat by T. Saussure gives the fol-
lowing results : —
10
THE CEREAL PLANTS.
Potash. ....
. 15.
Phosphate of potash .
. 32.
Muriate of potash . .
0.16
Sulphate of potash
a trace
Earthy phosphates
. 44.5
Silica ....
0.5
Metallic oxides . .
0.25
Loss .
7.59
100.00
The analysis of the ashes of the straw gave
the following result : —
Potash . . .
. 12.5
Phosphate of potash .
5.
Muriate of potash
3.
Sulphate of potash
2.
Earthy phosphates
6.2
Earthy carbonates
1.
Silica . . .
61.5
Metallic oxides . .
1.
Loss .
7.8
100.0
WHEAT.
11
The analysis of the ashes of the whole plant
when in blossom, gave of: —
Soluble salts . . ■
. 41.
Earthy phosphates
. 10.75
Earthy carbonates
0.25
26.
Metallic oxides . .
0.5
Loss .
. 21.5
100.00
These results show, that from the time of
flowering to the maturity of the seed, a portion
of the soluble salts is converted into the earthy
phosphates, and that silica increases the straw,
but not the grain.
The fresh ashes of wheat contain : —
Phosphate of potash . . 36.51
,, of soda . . 32.13
,, of lime . . 3.35
,, of magnesia . 19.61
Perphosphate of iron . 3.04
Silica •/; . -15
Coal and sand .... 4.99
12
THE CEEEAL PLANTS.
The aslies of the bran of wheat contain in 100
parts :
Potash 14.
Phosphate of lime . . 7.
Chloride of potassium . .16
Earthy phosphates . . 46.5
Silica .5
Metallic oxides ... .25
Loss . . 8.59
100 lbs. of wheat bran contain 48 lbs. of nutri-
tive matter.
100 lbs. of wheat chaff contain 60 lbs. of nu-
tritive matter.
Wheat in 100 parts contains: —
Carbon 46.1
Hydrogen 5.8
Oxygen 43.4
Nitrogen 2.3
Ashes 2.4
100.0
Wheat contains: —
Starch ...... 70.00
Gluten ...... 23.00
100 lbs. of wheat contain 95 lbs. of nutritive
matter.
WHEAT. 13
Wheat straw contains in 100 parts: —
Carbon 48.4
Hydrogen 5.3
Oxygen 38.9
Nitrogen 0.4
Ashes ....... 7.0
100.0
100 lbs. of wheat straw contain 14 lbs. of
nutritious matter.
Wheat thrives best on clays that have been
well wrought, cleaned, loosened, and pulverised,
by the process of fallowing; for, though the
plant requires a compact subsoil, some land is
found so very stiff and adhesive in quality, as to
require loosening of the texture to adapt it for
the vegetating of seed, and for the tillering of
the roots of plants. Lands that appear to be
loose on the surface will produce wheat, provided
the subsoil be firm and compact, and at the same
time healthy, and not of a repellent nature.
Besides being sown on bare summer fallows,
wheat follows as a crop on pea and bean grattans
with one ploughing, and on potato and turnip
fallows, and is also sown after tares, and on grass
lands that have lain for two, three, or more years
in pasturage.
A brief mention will be made of each procese.
14
THE CEREAL PLANTS.
Clay-lands will have been duly prepared
and cleaned by repeated ploughings, harrow-
ings, and rollings, and the lime and manure
applied and ploughed in by the month of Sep-
tember; and during that month, and very early
in October, the seed-furrowing of the land will
commence; and where the extent of clay-lands
is great, aud where the quality of the soil is wet,
and the climate precarious, the whole strength
of the farm must be combined for this most
important purpose. The first day, ploughing
only goes on; on the second, a sower enters,
followed by two or three pairs of two-horse
harrows, which will finish all the land that is
ploughed. As soon as any part of a field is
finished by harrowing, the water-furrows must
be carefully cleaned out, and all cross-cuts drawn
by the plough, and cut by the spade, that no
water stagnate in any part. This point requires
the most serious attention to keep wet lands
artificially dry. On the wetter clays, sowing the
grain in broadcast is yet found preferable to
drilling, owing to the often inconvenient breadth
of the ridges, the waxy adhesiveness of the soil,
and the great precariousness of the climate. In
such soils, it is often necessary to harrow the
ridges, by means of harrows attached to a tree
stretching across them, and the horses walking
in the furrows. Where the ridges are per-
manently wide, the tree reaches from the furrow
WHEAT.
15
to the top of the ridge on which the horse walks,
which prevents the poaching of the side of the
ridge by the feet of the animal. In every case
of wet clay-lands, the water-furrows and cuts
must be made with the least possible delay. A
dry seed-time is of very great importance on
such lands; and yet in wet seasons, when the
crop is thinner on the ground, the ears are
always found to be plump and heavy. But this
may not compensate for the want of number of
plants. At the same time, too dry weather
does not suit for sowing clay-lands, if the clods,
from hardness, do not break with the action of
the harrows. A medium state is preferable.
Wheat is sown on the heavier turnip soils
after the Swedish turnips are removed in autumn,
and on the potato-grounds after the crop is
raised. In both cases one ploughing is sufficient,
with a previous harrowing to prepare the ground
for the drill-machine. The lands that can be
made to produce these green crops are of a drier
nature, and the attention to water-furrows and
cuts may be somewhat relaxed; but in many
cases they are still necessary. The same may be
said of pea and bean grattans, and of tare
stubbles; only in case of foulness, the ground
may require a scuffling to clean it of weeds before
it is ploughed. On stiff close-bottomed loams,
these crops form an excellent preparative for
wheat.
1C
THE CEKEAL PLANTS.
In what is called the Norfolk rotation; viz.
turnips, barley, clover, wheat, this latter plant
gets one ploughing from grass; and the seed is
usually deposited by the drill-machine. The
decomposition of the roots of the clover is
thought to afford very soluble food for the
wheat; and the natural looseness of the land is
in many cases remedied by the consolidation
produced by an implement called the "land-
presser," which follows the ploughs, and presses
the seams of the furrows by means of cast-iron
cylindrical wheels, grooved to suit the inter-
stices. But lands that require this artificial con-
solidation are not properly wheat soils ; and the
firmness had better be produced by the land
remaining longer in grass. No finer specimen
of farming can be seen than the drilled wheats
in Norfolk, the rows straight as a line, and not
a strayed pickle.
Wheat is, in some cases, sown by dibbling the
seed in the ground, by means of prongs making
holes in the land, into which the seeds are
dropped. Machines are now invented to per-
form this work very correctly. Much benefit is
supposed to be derived to light lands, by the
treading of the feet of the work-people employed
in performing the process ; but, as before observed,
lands that require artificial consolidation are not
wheat soils, and may better be employed in
lighter cropping. On all wet or damp soils,
WHEAT. |7
dibbling is altogether unsuitable, and drilling
also, where wetness and adhesiveness prevail.
Four single times of harrowing are usually
sufficient on proper wheat-lands, in order to
cover the seed, and two on lighter loams after
the drill-machine. Three bushels of see d to an
acre may be stated as an average allowance, and
less m early seasons, and on good lands.
Previous to being sown, the seeds of wheat
are now almost universally steeped in solutions
of corrosive substances, in order to destroy the
. seeds of disease that are supposed to adhere to
the pickles. Various substances have been re-
commended, _ and are used; the most common
are, stale urine, and common salt in a strong
solution, made so powerful as to swim an ej.
This liqmd, or the stale urine, is put into a clSe
tub ; a bushel of seed is put into a smaller vessel
with a thin iron bottom thickly pierced with
holes which is sunk in the close tub, when the
liquid rises; and on being strained, the %ht
gram floats on the top, and is ver y carefully
skimmed off. After frequent stirrings, the small
vessel is raised, when the liquid escapes down-
wards into the close tub, and the seed, after bein*
well dripped, is thrown on a boarded flooi°
encrusted with quick lime, carried to the field'
and sown immediately. How the effect of such
a preparation is communicated so as to prevent
18
THE CEREAL PLANTS.
disease, yet remains a secret: but the fact is
settled beyond all dispute.
Wheat should be reaped before it is dead ripe,
or the ears bend downwards; the yellowness of
the straw below the ears indicates the readiness;
and the meal will harden after being cut, and is
always finer in quality than when dead ripe.
The straw is also more juicy. The crop is best
cut by sickle, and tied into sheaves; the straw is
too tall, and the ears are too heavy for being
mowed, as they fall over the cradle scythe. The
expense of cutting an acre of wheat varies from
six shillings to ten.
It is very customary to cut wheat crops high
above the ground, and to mow and secure the
stubble afterwards for the purpose of litter. But
it may be preferable to cut the crop low at
once, and tie it into sheaves of a moderate size.
The crop is then built into ricks, or lodged
in barns, thrashed by machine, or flail, and
winnowed for use. These processes are all well
understood.
Hard wheats contain most gluten, which, con-
taining a portion of nitrogen, readily promotes
the rising of the dough, which is so very necessary
for making good light bread. The quantity of
this substance varies with soil and climate, from
5 per cent, in some soft wheats, to 30 per cent,
in the hardest and most flinty. This presence of
WHEAT.
id
gluten fits the Italian wheats so much for
rich paste. The soft wheats contain most starch,
and are, therefore, the most fitted for brewing or
distilling.
The choosing of wheat for seed, is a matter of
very great importance. The finest wheat does
not always make the best seed; but it depends
on the nature of the land on which it grows.
The proportions of gluten and starch in wheats
vary much, and by those proportions, a perfect
vegetation has been found to be very much
influenced. These proportions are varied from
the original seed by the quality of the soil on
which the wheat grows, by its containing more
animal manure or vegetable humus: and by
increasing the one or the other, we may bring
our wheat to have all the properties of the
original seed. Some places in certain districts
soon become known for yielding good seed; and
to these, recourse must very frequently be had,
as wheat is known to degenerate very quickly
in other soils.
Wheat is very subject to diseases of different
kinds ; the most common in Britain being rust,
mildew, ergot, the wheat midge, burnt-ear
and smut. Rust and mildew are very similar,
and are consequently often confounded, and
appear by infecting both the grain and the
straw with a yellow ochre, which prevents the
growth and the further development of the
20
THE CEREAL PLANTS.
plant. The disease evidently proceeds from an
atmospheric stroke, often pervading whole fields
in a zig-zag direction, and following the course
of the aerial blast. Against these diseases, no
remedy has been found. The ergot is a bony
excrescence into which the seed is transformed,
and it is supposed to be caused by the puncture
of some insect, introducing a virus which
entirely alters the functions of the germ. It
has a poisonous quality, and also a medicinal
one. The wheat midge is allied to the Hessian
fly, which, at one time, caused such wide de-
predations in America and Canada. It deposits
its eo-gs at the root of the germ in the ear, and
prevents the filling of the grain, the maggot
living on the nutritive juices which should pro-
duce the farina. This disease is not very
prevalent in Britain. The disease called burnt-
ear, pepper-brand, and dust-brand, destroys the
whole fructification of the plant, and attacks
oats and barley, as well as wheat. It is often
confounded with smut, but differs in having
no fetid smell, and so very little specific gravity,
that it is easily blown away by light winds,
and (beyond the loss of the grain so turned into
a light dust) no detriment arises to the crop, as
in the case of smut infecting sound grain, and
deteriorating the flour. Moist situations often
produce many burnt ears, and are consequently
supposed to proceed from dews lodging in the
WHEAT.
21
ears, and producing rottenness. Washing and
steeping form no preventives, as in the case of
smut, for the dust does not adhere to any other
body. It has been supposed to be a variety of
smut, which attacks the external part of the
fructification before the skin of the grain is
formed. But on this point, nothing beyond
supposition exists.
Smut is the most prevalent and the most
fetal of all the diseases which infest the wheat
plant. It is found in almost every country
where wheat is grown, being most prevalent
on wet soils and in humid climates. The
pickle is transformed into a brownish black
powder very fetid in smell; and it imparts its
noxious qualities to the bodies to which it
adheres.
Of the numerous and discordant theories,
opinions, and conjectures, that have been pro-
mulgated on the subject of this affection of the
wheat plant, no one has yet progressed beyond
the limits of bare supposition: and even the
most scientific theory yet entertained, of at-
tributing the disease to the action of the seeds
of parasitical fungi, under various botanical
appellations, has not enlightened the agricultural
world, otherwise than in exhausting patience,
and arriving at no conclusion. Experience has
long ago most amply shewn, that the disease
is infectious: but how this infection is comimi-
22
THE CEREAL PLANTS.
nicated, forms the grand puzzle, as sound and
diseased grains are found placed side by side,
on the same ear; and sound and diseased ears
are found to proceed from the same root. This
circumstance shows, that the infection does not
proceed regularly from the root, or every part
of the plant would he affected alike.
The disease is very infectious, and is cured,
or at least very much modified, by steeping the
seeds, previous to being sown, in strong solutions
of corrosive substances. Jethro Tull relates,
that this fact was accidentally discovered by the
sinking of a ship near Bristol, which was laden
with wheat, and which being afterwards sold
at a low price, and bought by the poor farmers
in the neighbourhood and sown by them for
want of better, escaped smut, when nearly all
the wheat in England was infected. The
steeping of the seed, on being repeated, gave
the same results, and has led to the use of other
corrosives. The efficacy of corrosives has been
most satisfactorily proved in the case of seeds
being purposely rubbed and infected with smut
powder, and then washed, and which showed fewer
diseased ears than where washing of the seed was
not applied. And this fact has been amply settled
by a majority of similar results.
This is all that is known in the present state
of science, as to the cause and prevention of
smut. The real nature of the disease has
EYE.
2. -5
hitherto eluded the search of the most scientific
inquirers ; and the veil which nature has drawn
over many of her works yet remains unbroken.
But a hope may be very reasonably entertained,
and even very confidently expressed, that the
very great advances that have been lately made
in scientific knowledge, and the unceasing efforts
of genius in endeavouring to explore the secrets
of nature, may soon render the mystery oi
smut as clear and intelligible as many other
arcana of nature, which half a century ago
were reckoned equally obscure. But on these
subjects, it would be presumptuous to be san-
guine, and unphilosophical to despair.
2. Rye.
The word Rye is derived from ry^e, Saxon,
signifying a coarse kind of bread corn. It is
the Secale of botanists, a native of the island of
Candia, and introduced into Britain many ages
ago. Etymologists, from Pliny downwards, are
unanimous in deriving the word Secale, from the
Latin verb, Seco, to cut; and hence the word
Seges, the Latin appellation of all grain that is
cut with a similar implement.
The genus Secale belongs to the class and or-
der, Triandria Digynia, of Linnceus; and the
natural order Graminece of Jussieu.
24
THE CEREAL PLANTS.
Generic Character:— Calyx, common re-
ceptacle, toothed, elongated into a spike. Glume,
containing two flowers, and consisting of two
opposite, distant, erect, oblong, pointed valves,
smaller than the corolla. Florets, sessile. Corolla,
of two valves, the outermost hardest, turned, point-
ed, compressed, fringed at the keel, and ending
in a long awn; the inner, flat, lanceolate. Nectary,
of two, lanceolate, sharpish, fringed, scales, tumid
on one side at the base. Stamina, filaments,
three, capillary, hanging out of the flower.
Anthers, oblong, forked. Pistils, germen supe-
rior, turbinate. Styles, two, reflexed. Stigmas,
cylindrical, feathery. Pericarp, none, except the
permanent corolla, which finally opens and lets
the seed escape. Seed, solitary, oblong, some-
what cylindrical, naked, pointed. There is
sometimes a third floret, scarcely perfect, stalked,
between the other two. It is very difEcult to
distinguish this genus from Triticum.
Essential Character: — Calyx, of two
valves, solitary, two-flowered, or a toothed elon-
gated receptacle.
Botanists enumerate four kinds of Eye: — 1.
Secale Cereale, or Cultivated Eye, a native of
most parts of the world. — 2. Secale Villosum, or
Tufted Eye, a native of the South of Europe, and
of the Levant, and gathered by Dr. Sibthorp, in
the fields of Crete and Zante. It is cultivated in
RTE.
25
those islands ; but we know nothing of its agricul-
tural merits in this country. — 3. Secale orien-
tale, or Dwarf Oriental Rye; is a native of the
sandy soils in the Archipelago. — 4. Secale Cre-
ticum, tall Cretan Rye, a native of Crete, and
gathered abundantly in the Levant, by Tournefort.
Our description is limited to the first-men-
tioned kind, or the Cultivated Rye. Glumes
of the calyx, bordered with minute parallel
teeth; the root is fibrous, and annual herbage
somewhat glaucous. Stem, jointed, slightly
branched at the bottom, smooth. Leaves, linear,
rough towards the point. Spike, terminal, soli-
tary, erect, three or four inches long. Awns,
erect, straight, rough, four or five times the
length of the glumes.
The cultivation of Rye is very simple. It
thrives best on dry sandy soils, where it produces
a crop in cases where no other known plant
would exist. It requires no other preparation
than one ploughing. Three to four bushels of
seed are allowed to an acre, whether intended
for a seed-bearing crop, or for being eaten green
by sheep in the spring. Rye is also mixed with
tares, in the ratio of one to three or four. When cut
in a young state, the grass of it is very palatable
to animals — but if allowed to grow tall, it be-
comes very coarse, and is very generally rejected.
The great and invaluable use of Rye consists in
its yielding, in the early spring, a very grateful
26
THE CEREAL PLANTS.
and succulent food for ewes and lambs, at a
period when no other plant known to us, can be
brought forward, and on soils where any other
plant could scarcely exist. The crop can be
consumed in time for the land being prepared for
a crop of turnips. When mixed with winter tares,
the fibrous nature of the gramineous stem of rye,
forms a wholesome corrective to the watery con-
sistency of the leguminous vetch. Rye is often
sown mixed with wheat in the ratio of one to
four, and forms " meslin," (from mesler to mix),
which, in the opinion of medical men, is the best
bread that can be used. It is curious that millers
universally prefer Wheat and Rye that have
grown together, to any mixture of the two grains
that have grown separately.
The comparative value of wheat and rye is as
71 to 64. The spirit called " Hollands" is dis-
tilled from Rye, which is flavoured with juniper,
in Dutch called Genever, whence, the name
of Geneva, and its contraction, Gin. When
malted, it makes excellent beer, one bushel of
rye-malt being reckoned equal to one and a
quarter of barley-malt. Rye is yet much used
for bread in poor countries; but the use of it
must be held as a mark of an inferior advance in
civilisation. The pure bread of rye is clammy,
and very detergent. The straw of rye is very
strong, makes good thatch, and is often of equal
value with the crop of grain.
EYE. 27
The ashes of rye contain in 100 parts: —
Phosphate of potash 52.91
„ of soda 9-29
,, of lime 5.21
,, of magnesia . . . • 26.91
Perphosphate of iron 1-88
Sulphate of potash and common salt 2.98
Silicate of potash -34
Sand 50
100.
Eye contains in 100 parts: —
Hydrogen .... 5.6
Oxygen .... 44.2
Nitrogen 1-7
Ashes 2.3
100.0
raw contains in 100 parts: —
Carbon 49.9
Hydrogen .... 5.6
Oxygen .... 40.6
Nitrogen .... 0.3
Ashes 3.6
100.0
28
THE CEREAL PLANTS.
Eye is subject to the common diseases of gra-
mineous plants, but in a modified form ; so much
so, that a mixture of rye sown with the wheat,
has been thought to prevent mildew; and cer-
tainly, in our country, any disease of rye is
almost wholly unknown. In foreign countries,
however, it is affected by one most remarkable
distemper, called " ergot," the French name of
a cock's spur, which the diseased grain resembles
in shape. The affection is most prevalent in wet
seasons, and on poor soils, and in a humid close
air. It is doubtful, if this disease proceeds from
an altered condition of the pistil, or whether it
results from the puncture of insects, or from the
development of a fungus : this last view is most
generally adopted, and is rendered probable by
the investigations of Wiggers, who found by
analysis, that the basis of the structure of the
spur is almost identical in chymical properties
with the principle called " fungin," that the
white dust is infectious, and appears to be analo-
gous to the sporidia, or spawn of fungi. De
Candolle considers the fungus to be the Scele-
rotium clavus. The spur is of variable length,
from a few lines to two inches, and from two to
four inches in thickness; when large, only a few
grains in each ear are affected ; when small, in
general, all of them are diseased. The colour
varies externally and internally, from a bluish-
black to a dullish white, or gray tint. It is
RYE.
29
specifically lighter than water, which distin-
guishes sound from healthy grain; when fresh,
it is tough and flexible; but when dry, it is
brittle, and easily pidverised. The powder is
very apt to attract moisture, which impairs its
properties: and time completely dissipates its
peculiar qualities. It has a disagreeable heavy
smell, resembling that of fungi, a nauseous
slightly acrid taste, and imparts both its taste
and smell to water and alcohol. Bread which
contains it is defective in firmness, liable to
become moist, and cracks and crumbles soon
after being taken from the oven. The analysis
of Wiggers found it to contain a heavy smelling
fixed oil, fungin, albumen, osmazome, waxy
matter, and an extractive substance of a strong
peculiar taste and smell, in which, from experi-
ments on animals, he was led to infer that its
active properties reside. To this substance, he
gave the name of " ergotine." Dr. Christison,
of Edinburgh College, found Wiggers' statement
very generally correct, except in his finding
" ergotine" to be destitute of any marked taste,
or smell. Willdenow thinks that there arc two
varieties of spur, and that only one of them is
possessed of active properties.
The poisonous effects of spurred rye were
observed as early as 1596; and it is said to have
produced spasmodic and gangrenous disorders,
epilepsy, and lunatic stupidity. Since that time,
30
THE CEREAL PLANTS.
the poisonous quality lias been sufficiently proved,
in producing spasms and ultimately dry gan-
grenes. The medical quality consists in for-
warding parturiency, and in some other cases,
where its utility rests upon less decisive evidence
than in the case already quoted. Latterly, it is
said to have proved a most efficient styptic in
cases of external hemorrhage.
Ergot has become an article of commerce, and
is sold by druggists at ten shillings to twenty
shillings an ounce, so that, if only one pound of
ergot could be collected from an acre, it would
be worth more than the value both of straw and
sound grain.
De Candolle is of opinion, that ergot is
caused by a peculiar fungus which attacks the
ovary of grasses, destroying them when young,
and protruding from them in a lengthened
form, in rye, and other European grasses; and
Fontaine asserts, that it may be propagated by
contact. But this latter statement has been
contradicted.
Ergot attacks other gramineous plants, be-
sides rye. In Carolina, and in Colombia, it
attacks Indian corn, and assumes, in some cases,
a globose, and in others, a pear-shaped figure.
Some botanists admit the disease to be a real
fungus — others think that it is a diseased state
of the grain, swelling into a fungoid body, and
covered externally with powder. The question
BARLEY.
31
must be regarded as far from being settled. The
definitive form assumed by ergot, is unfavour-
able to the idea of its being a mere disease; tbe
powdery efflorescence proceeding from its sur-
face requires to be more particularly examined,
and tbe microscopical anatomy of tbe production
in different states, must be far more exactly
studied than it has yet been, before the true
nature of ergot can be positively determined.
3. Barley.
Junius derives the word barley from a Hebrew
noun, of the same meaning with here of the
northern nations, and the hordeum of the Eomans.
This latter word proceeds from horridum, Latin,
on account of the plant having long awns, or
beards; or, by frequent alterations in the spell-
ings of the word from <f>ep/3a), Greek, to feed or
nourish. The plant belongs to the class and
order, Triandria Digynia of Linnasus, and to the
natural order, Graminea of Jussieu.
Generic Character. — Calyx, common re-
ceptacle lengthened into a spike. Glume, six-
leaved, three-flowered, flowers sessile, leaflets
distant, in pairs, linear, acuminate. Corolla, two-
valved, lower valve bellying, angular, ovate-
acuminate, longer than the calyx, ending in a
long awn; inner valve, lanceolate, flat. Smaller
32
THE CEREAL PLANTS.
nectary, two-leaved, leaflets, ovate, sharp, ciliate.
Stamina, filaments, three, capillary, shorter than
the corolla. Anthers, oblong. Pistillum, germ,
ovate-turbinate. Styles, two, villose, reflex. Stiff-
mas, similar. Pericarpium, none; the corolla
grows round the seed, without opening. Seed,
oblong, bellying, angular, acuminate to both
ends, marked with a groove on one side, covered
with permanent corolla. Radicles of the em-
bryo, six.
In some species, all the three flowers are per-
fect in all their parts, and fertile in others; the
lateral ones are male, the central ones only being
hermaphrodite and fertile.
Essential Character. — Common recepta-
cle, toothed, and excavated. Calyx, lateral,
ternate, two-valved, single flowered.
Willdenow, and other botanists, reckon ten
species of Barley, four of which are cultivated
grains, and the six are barley grasses, which are
rather hurtful than useful to the farmer. As
many as fifteen species of hordeum are distin-
guished by Professor Kunth; and, in addition,
there are many varieties. The species are found
in a wild state in most parts of the old and new
world. Hordeum is distinguished from Triticum,
by its spikelets having only one perfect floret in
each, and by its glumes being somewhat unila-
teral and bearded. Eye, or Secale, differs in
BARLEY.
3:5
having two perfect florets to each spikelet, and in
the same additional circumstances as Triticum.
Hordeum vulgare, or our Common Cultivated
Barley, is said to have been found wild in Sicily
and in Russia. It is annual. The flowers and
seeds are disposed indistinctly in several rows,
Avith very long, compressed, rough, awns. There
is a supposed variety, termed Hordeum celeste,
in which the husk or corolla does not stick
to the seed, — and another, with black seeds,
said by Willdenow to be biennial.
Hordeum hexastichum, has six rows of seeds —
ears, cylindrical — awns, very long, rough, and
rigid, rather spreading away from the ear, —
grains adhering to the husk. The native country
of this species of barley is unknown. It is the
here or bigg of farmers, and is valuable in ripen-
ing quicker than the common two-rowed barley,
and it is more productive in high latitudes, and
on inferior soils. It is invaluable in northern
countries where the summers are short. The
grain is inferior in quality.
Hordeum distichum, or Two-rowed Barley — ears
cylindrical — awns almost parallel with the ear —
grains adhering to the husk. This is the Hor-
deum vulgare of some botanists, and is the common
Summer Barley of England. The ears are not so
large as those of the Hordeum hexastichum, but the
grains are heavier. It is commonly stated to be a
native of Tartary. Colonel Chesney found it
D
34
THE CEREAL PLANTS.
■wild in Mesopotamia, upon the banks of the
Euphrates.
Hordeum zeocriton, has the ears conical, —
awns spreading away from the ear, in a flabelli-
form manner — grains adhering to the husk.
From the spreading direction of the awns, the
ears of this barley acquire a much broader figure
at the top than at the bottom; and on this ac-
count, it has been called, " Battledore Barley,"
and also " Sprat Barley." The native country is
unknown, and it is little cultivated, on account of
the shortness of the straw.
The Orge celeste of the French is a naked
six-rowed barley, very productive, and in many
parts of Europe, it is reckoned to be the most
productive of all. The grains are loose in the
husk — ear, cylindrical — awns, very long, rough,
and rigid, and rather spreading away from the
ear. It is the Hordeum gymo-hexastichum, of
scientific writers.
Hordeum JEgice?-as, or Tartarian Wheat, is
a most curious species, found in Tartary, and in
the northern parts of India; ears, cylindrical —
florets arranged in a confused manner, not in
rows — -awns, soft, short, hooded, and bent down-
wards — grains loose in the husk. It resembles
wheat more than barley; and its naked grains
assist the resemblance.
There are many other varieties of Barley, but
not of sufficient importance to require particular
BARLEY.
35
notice, except in works that treat of agriculture
in lengthened detail.
Barley requires a good, free, and mellow soil,
of a medium consistency — ■ loose, hut not com-
posed of a pulverulent mass of distant unconnec-
ted particles — and firm, hut not cemented into
lumps hy a viscous aluminous adherence. If
the soil partakes very considerahly of the latter
quality, it is unfit for the growth of Barley ; hut
if the inclination to stiffness he moderate, it may
and must he overcome by working of the land.
Barleys are now almost universally sown in the
spring, on turnip or potato fallows, that have
been well wrought, cleaned, and dunged for these
crops ; and may he sown in March, by hand or
by drill, at the rate of two and three bushels per
acre. One ploughing is sufficient, and the seed
must be committed to the earth without the least
delay, in order that the commencement of germ-
ination may derive the benefit of the fresh
combinations that take place between the earthy
and atmospheric elements. No exposure of the
newly stirred land must be allowed; two or three
ploughings, with harrowings and draggings,
were formerly and are yet occasionally used ; but
the custom is a bad one: it allows drought to
penetrate the soil, and reduces the bed of the seed
to a collection of dry clods. The rule is : — to
plough, sow, harrow, and roll the same day if
possible. If that despatch be not possible, then .
36
THE CEREAL PLANTS.
let it be done on the next day; and in all cases
roll the land across, immediately on the harrow-
ing being finished. Light lands will require
probably two applications of a roll, not less than
one ton in weight. Farmers, in general, are
afraid to use the roll, from a dread of producing
too much firmness; but light lands never can be
too much consolidated: and on those of a stiffer
nature, the pulverisation must be effected during
the fallowing for the green crops ; and on being
again stirred, the surface requires a firmness in
which to fix the seeds, and a flatness to hold
moisture, and to exclude droughts. Experience
shows, that seeds vegetate and grow best in a cer-
tain degree of consistency of the earthy particles,
and not in a loose incoherent surface, that is ex-
posed openly to drying winds and scorching suns.
In sowing barleys, therefore, the drill machine
must follow closely upon the ploughs — the
harrows closely on the sower — and the roll must
be used athwart, so soon as the sowing and harrow-
ing lengthwise are finished. On very large farms,
where the fields are extensive, and where the
farmers are alive to the great value of despatch
in every operation, more especially at the open-
ing season of the year, the rolling commences
across when the field is about half sown and
harrowed, which makes a turning necessary in
the middle of the field. But this seeming
awkwardness is disregarded, for the very im-
BARLEY.
37
portant purpose of securing the advantages of a
fresh tilth, and the attendant invigorating com-
binations.
The yellowness in the straw and the drooping
heads of barley, show that maturity is approach-
ing — and, like all other grain, barley is the better
for being reaped before dead ripeness has taken
place. The latter state produces a thick husk,
which is very detrimental in the process of grind-
ing, while an early reaping yields a much thinner
husk, and also induces a kindlier germination in
the hands of the maltster. The crop is cut by
sickle or by scythe. In the former method, it is
tied into sheaves, and set into shocks of twelve
sheaves each, and when sufficiently dry, it is
carried into barns, or built into circular or oblong
ricks, and thatched with straw. "When cut by the
scythe, and laid in rows, the swathes are turned
over several times to promote the drying, and
when this state has been attained, the crop is
carried in a loose state, and stacked like hay.
But the tying in sheaves is the most advisable
mode, as it forms much the neatest process, and
sheds least seed in the handling. The tied state
also suits best in the scutchers of the thrashing
machine; whereas loose straw generally requires
to undergo the process of scutching twice. The
most commonly used of these machines separate the
•grain and chaff by one and the first operation, —
the grain is riddled from the chaffing machine,
38
THE CEEEAL PLANTS.
and then put through a fanner that is attached
to, and driven by, the impelling power. But by-
raising the threshing machine to the height of a
third floor, a height is obtained for placing the
fanning machines below each other, into which
the grain passes in its descent, and reaches the
lowest floor in a clean marketable state. A tra-
velling carrier driven by the machinery, can be
contrived to convey the unthreshed sheaves from
the ground to the feeding board, to the hand of
the person who feeds the rollers, and thus will
be obviated the complaint that has been often
made, of getting the unthreshed grain raised to
the height of three stories.
The awns of barley are very rigid, and strongly
attached to the husk of the grain, of which they
form the elongated termination. The first process
of scutching the grain from the straw fails in
cutting the awns from the grain ; and another
process, called " hummeling," is performed, by
which the grain is spread thinly on the floor, and
stamped over repeatedly by a hand tool made of
square thin iron bars joined into a square, and
moved by an upright wooden handle ; or the grain
is a second time passed through the rollers of the
threshing machine, which, in most cases, effectu-
ally breaks the awns from the grain. But of late
years, an upright cylinder has been attached to,
and is driven by, the end of the axis of the drum
of the machine; and, being provided in the inside
BARLEY.
39
with fixed flat knives, the rotatory motion breaks
the awns, on the grain passing down the length
of the cylinder. This appendage forms a very
valuable addition to the threshing machine, where
human power should direct and not perform.
The chief use of barley is the being converted
into malt for the purpose of brewing and dis-
tilling, in all climates that do not permit-the vine
to grow. The best and heaviest grain is chosen
for this purpose — the least heating, or discolor-
ation, rendering the grain suspected, and not so
saleable. For this invention, the world is indebted
to the monks, who, if they degraded the intellect,
it must be acknowledged that they at the same
time improved the physical enjoyments of the
human race.
Barley, and malt made from it, contain :—
Barley. Malt.
Gluten 3 . . 1
Sugar 4 . . 16
Gum 5 . . 14
Starch 88 . . 69
100 100
Barley is very usefully employed in being
ground into meal for feeding cattle and pigs, and
also for human food. " Pot Barley," is made by
removing the outer husk or skin; and "Pearl
Barley" is a finer preparation, effected by remov-
ing the skin and a considerable portion of the
40
THE CEREAL PLANTS.
barleycorn, and leaving only a small round
kernel. Both these preparations of barley are
made by means of mills constructed for the pur-
pose, and differ only in the degree of grinding,
which the grain undergoes. Barley thus pre-
pared is very wholesome and nutritious, and is
much used in broths, stews, and puddings. The
grains swell, and unite with the fat and oily
matters of meat in boiling. The essential oil of
barley, which gives it the peculiar taste, resides
chiefly in the skin and the adjacent parts of the
grain — the interior is a purer farina, more
nearly resembling that of wheat. This circum-
stance, no doubt, suggested the idea of removing
the outer part, and using the interior, as approach-
ing nearer to pure fecula, or starch. It is to be
regretted, that these highly nutritive substances
have not yet found a more extensive use among
the labouring classes.
In the Eastern countries, barley is very exten-
sively used as food for horses; but there seems
to be something in the climate that adapts this
food to the body; for in our country, the use of
barley has never gained any ground in that way,
probably from the coolness of the climate re-
quiring a more heating food in the oat.
Decoctions of barley are useful in medicine.
They are palatable and demulcent, but are apt
to cloy the stomach, and require the addition
of lemon juice, or some other acid, to quicken the
BARLEY.
41
action. Barley-waters are very grateful in fevers,
allaying thirst, without exciting the circulation.
Barley is subject to the same diseases as other
gramineous plants; hut none affect it so much as
to render necessary any preparation of the seed.
The hurnt ear does appear sometimes in very dry
hot seasons. The greatest enemy to it is a wet
harvest, barley being very apt to germinate from
the ear, and its straw being so very retentive of
moisture. "When the clover grows luxuriantly, it
much helps this propensity; and when sprouting
takes place, the grain is fit only for feeding pigs
and poultry.
The produce of barley may be stated, on an
average, at forty bushels per acre, and the weight
at fifty pounds per bushel. It contains 65 per
cent, of nutritive matter, while wheat contains
78 per cent. The value of wheat, barley, and
oats, in feeding cattle, may be represented by the
figures 47, 32, 24, the measure being the same.
This calculation is founded on the experiments
made on a large scale, by Von Thaer, at his
establishment at Mogelin, in Prussia, where an
account of the results was very accurately kept.
Saussure, the well known French analytical
chymist, has very carefully analysed the ashes
produced by burning barley and its straw; with
an account of which we shall close our notice
of the barley plant.
The grain, reduced to ashes with its skin,
42 THE CEREAL PLANTS.
gave from 100 parts, 18 of ashes, which con-
tained : —
JL i-luO L/XXcL L\j U± UOLtttoXl .
Q 0
Sulphate of potash
1.5
Muriate of potash
0.25
Earthy phosphates
. 32.5
Earthy carbonates
0.0
Silica
35.5
Metallic oxides
0.25
Loss .
2.8
100.00
100 parts of the straAv produced 42 of ashes
containing : — ■
Potash ....
. 16.
Sulphate of potash
3.5
Muriate of potash
0.5
Earthy phosphates
7.75
Earthy carbonates
. 12.5
Silica ....
. 57.0
Metallic oxides
0.5
Loss . .
2.25
100.00
Barley contains : —
Starch . .
Gluten .
79.00
6.00
OATS.
43
These products will, no doubt, vary in different
soils; but it is very remarkable, to observe the
proportion of silica in the straw and in the skin
of barley.
3. Oats.
The word Oat is derived from the Saxon verb
acen or eren, to eat. It is the Avena of botanists,
which word proceeded from the Latin verb aveo,
to desire or covet, cattle being very fond of it.
The plant belongs to the class Triandria Digynia
of Linnsus, and to the natural order Gramine*
of Jussieu.
General Character.- Calyx, glume gene-
rally, many-flowered, two-valved, loosely collect-
ing the flowers: valves lanceolate, acute, ventri-
cose, loose, large, awnless. Corolla, two-valved;
lower valve harder than the calyx, of the
size of the calyx, roundish, ventricose, acu-
minate at both ends, emitting from the back an
awn spirally twisted, reflex, as at the knee-joint.
Nectary, two-leaved; leaflets lanceolate, gibbous
at the base. Stamina, filaments, three, capillary.
Anthers, oblong, forked. Pistillum, germen ob-
tuse. Styles, two, reflex, hairy. Stigmas, simple.
Perianthium, none. Corolla, most firmly closed;
grows to the seed, and does not gape. Seed,
one, slender, oblong, acuminate at both ends,
marked with a longitudinal furrow.
44
THE CEREAL PLANTS.
Essential Character— Calyx, two-valved;
many flowered. Awn from the back of the
corolla, jointed, twisted.
The varieties of the oat-grass are very numerous.
No botanist has been able to ascertain satisfac-
torily the native growth-place of the oat, or
any other grain now cultivated in Europe. Our
present notice is exclusively restricted to the
cultivated oat, or the Avena sativa, which is
panicled — calyces, two-seeded — seeds very smooth
— one-awned. Eoot annual. Culm, or straw, two
feet high and upwards. The two glumes, or
chaffs of the calyx are marked with lines,
pointed at the end, longer than the flower, and
unequal. Two flowers and seeds in each calyx;
alternate, conical; smaller one, awnless; the larger
puts forth a strong, two-coloured, bent, awn,
from the middle of the back: both are cartila-
ginous and fertile.
The most common cultivated varieties of the
oat, are the Potato Oat, Siberian or Tartarian,
the Poland, the Dutch, the White, or Short
Essex Oat, the Black, Brown, and Ked.
The first-mentioned variety requires the best
land, yields the greatest quantity of grain, and
the most meal in that quantity. The Siberian,
or Tartarian, grows best on poor lands: the
Poland is thick in the husk, and coarse in the
straw. The red variety is fine in quality; but
on medium soils, the short white varieties are
OATS.
4.5
mostly preferred, which have different names in
the different places of cultivation.
Oats, to grow abundantly, require a rich adhe-
sive soil; but they also yield fair crops on
inferior lands that are judiciously cultivated-
They are mostly sown on the turf furrow of
grass lands of any age, as the first crop, and in
preparation for green crop fallows: and, from
whatever cause it may arise, the fact is certain,
that all green crops thrive better after oats, than
any other precursory plant. This fact has long
since fixed oats in ail judicious rotations, as the
first in the commencement of the course of
the cropping.
Oats are most generally sown broad-cast, and
harrowed, and rolled. The latter process is
absolutely necessary in dry seasons. Large
weeds, as docks and thistles, must be cut by
hand before the crop gets too tall. So soon as
the straw of the oat turns yellow below the
panicle, the crop should be reaped, however
green the lower part of the straw may be ; the
straw will be better fodder for cattle, and all the
corn will be saved — as the grain when fully ripe,
is very apt to be shed. Oats are often mown
with a scythe, and raked and carried loose ; but
it is better to tie the crop into sheaves, and to be
cut close by the ground. When sufficiently dry,
the crop is carried, built into ricks, or lodged in
40
THE CEREAL PLANTS.
barns. The threshing is performed by flail, or
machine, and winnowed for use.
The average of five bushels of oats is sown
on an acre ; and the produce varies from four to
eight and ten quarters per acre.
The general use of oats in Britain is as food
for horses ; though in the northern parts of the
kingdom, the grain is ground into meal, and
used as food by the lower classes of the popu-
lation; and it has become a very general observ-
ation, that nowhere are there to be seen such
horses and such men. But in producing such
results, climate must be allowed its due share.
Oats are also ground into Grits, and used for
making gruels for children and invalids.
Oats have not been chymically examined ; but
the greater part of their substance appears to
consist of feculu, or starch. For medical pur-
poses, gruels, or decoctions of groats or of oat-
meal, are very excellent demulcents, and are very
often prescribed in inflammatory diseases, and in
most febrile affections. They may be sweetened,
acidified, or used plain. They are also used in
glysters, and the meal, boiled with water into
porridge, forms an excellent suppurative poul-
tice.
OATS. 47
The aslies of oats contain in 100 parts: —
Potash 6.
Soda 5.
Lime 3.
Magnesia 2.5
Alumina 0.5
Silica * . 76.5
Sulphuric acid ... 1.5
Phosphoric acid ... 3.
Chlorine -5
Oat straw contains in 100 parts: —
Carhon 50.1
Hydrogen 5.4
Oxygen 39.
Nitrogen 0.4
Ashes 5.1
100.0
Oats contain in 100 parts: —
Carhon 50.7
Hydrogen 6.4
Oxygen 36.7
Nitrogen 2.2
Ashes • 4.0
100.0
48
THE LEGUMINOUS PLANTS.
Oats like a humid climate, and are, conse-
quently, much more profitable than barley on all
poor moist lands, and in high cold latitudes.
Clover and rye-grass are sown with oats, when
they follow turnip and potato fallows as a crop.
In France and Germany, the practice gains
ground, of baking oats and rye into loaves for
horse food, and it is said to be attended by an
evident saving of food. A pound of good oats,
is equal to two pounds of the best clover, or
sainfoin hay.
II. THE LEGUMINOUS PLANTS.
1. Vetches.
We now come to the second division of culti-
vated plants; viz., Vetches, Beans, and Pease.
The word Vetch is derived from the old Latin
name vicia, which is, by some etymologists, de-
rived from vincio, to bind together, as the various
species of this genus twine with their tendrils
round other plants. De Theis traces this word
to its Celtic synonym, gwig, whence also, accord-
ing to him, comes the modern Greek name of
the vetch, fiiKiov or /3>?/ca. The tribe of vicia
belongs to the class and order Diadelphia Decan-
dria of Linnasus, and to the natural order, Legu-
minosa of Jussieu.
VETCHES.
49
Generic Character. — Calyx, perianth one-
leafed, tubular, erect, half-five cleft, acute:
upper teeth shorter, converging, all of equal
breadth. Corolla, papilionaceous. Banner, oval,
with a broad oblong claw at the tip, emarginate
with a point, bent back at the sides, with a
longitudinal compressed raised line. Wings, two,
oblong, erect, half-cordate, with an oblong claw,
shorter than the banner-keel, with an oblong
two-parted claw; the belly compressed, semi-
orbicular, shorter than the wings. Stamina,
filaments diadelphous, single, and nine-cleft.
Anthers, erect, roundish, four-grooved; a necta-
reous gland springs from the receptacle be-
tween the compound stamen and the germ, short,
acuminate. Pistil, germ linear, compressed,
long. Style, filiform, shorter, ascending at an
erect angle. Stigma, obtuse, transversely bearded
below the tip. Pericarp, legume long, coria-
ceous, one-celled, two-valved, terminated by a
point. Seeds, several, roundish.
Essential Character. — Stigma, trans-
versely bearded on the under side.
The Faba of Tournefbrt has oval compressed
seeds. The Vicia of that author and Eivinus has
roundish seeds. The most important genera
belonging to the tribe are Vicia, Faba, Piswm,
Ervum, Lathyrus, Orobus, and Cicer.
The species of the genus Vicia are very
numerous. Don, in Miller's Dictionary, describes
50
THE LEGUMINOUS PLANTS.
above one hundred. It forms a most extensive
genus of herbaceous, perennial, or annual plants,
climbing by means of tendrils, which terminate
the common foot-stalk of their abruptly pinnated
leaves.
The species are mostly natives of Europe,
a few of Barbary, and of North America, scarcely
any occurring in tropical climates. The flowers
are axillary; either racemose onalongish common
stalk, or nearly sessile, solitary, or two or three
together; their colour crimson, purplish, or pale
yellowish, rarely white or blue.
Botanists divide Vicia into two sections: — I.
Flower-stalks elongated: — II. Flowers axillary,
nearly sessile. The plants to which our attention
is at present directed; viz., the Vicia saliva, or
the Cultivated Vetch, and the Vicia f aba, or Com-
mon Bean, belong to the second section.
The Vicia saliva, or the Cultivated Vetch, is a
native of cultivated grounds, and of grassy
pastures throughout Europe, and in Barbary and
Japan, flowering in May and June. Legumes
sessile, subbinate, nearly erect; lower leaves, re-
tuse; stipules, toothed, marked; seeds smooth
and even. Root annual. A very variable annual
plant, more or less hairy, distinguished by a
brown or blackish depressed mark on each
stipula, which is visible in all the supposed
varieties. The leaflets, usually four to six pair,
vary much in breadth; those of the lower leaves
VETCHES.
51
are shorter, abrupt, or even inversely heart-shaped ;
the rest lanceolate, or linear; all tipped with a
bristle. Tendril of the common stalk, long and
branched. Flowers variously shaded with red
and blue. Legume compressed, rough, or a little
downy, with many globose, or slightly lenticular,
very smooth seeds. The seeds are a very
favourite food of pigeons. Vetches contain in
10,000 parts, about 275 parts of potash.
Vetches form one of the most valuable of the
cultivated plants of the farm. There are two
varieties of the cultivated vetch very slightly
differing in appearance; one of which is hardy,
and will withstand the severity of winter; the
other is more tender, and is sown in the spring,
and has the property of vegetating and growing
more rapidly. The first has, no doubt, been
got from the second by occasional leavings of the
spring-sown vetches withstanding the winter's
cold, and have thus been impressed with the
persistent quality. The winter variety is sown
in September and October in two or three suc-
cessive sowings, and comes into use in the begin-
ning of May following, by being eaten on the
ground by sheep, or by being cut for soiling
horses and cattle in the yards of the homestead.
A mixture of rye, or of winter beans, is reckoned
advantageous. The more delicate variety, called
spring vetches, are sown in February or March,
according as the temperature of the weather will
E 2
52
THE LEGUMINOUS PLANTS.
permit, and continued at intervals of three weeks
in April and May, affording three or four cut-
tings in succession during the summer, and
throughout the autumn. A small mixture of
oats, or barley, is reckoned beneficial. The land
from which the earliest crop of winter vetches is
got, may be prepared for turnips, or wheat,
according to its quality; and the land on which
spring vetches are grown, may be sown with
wheat after one ploughing.
Vetches delight in strong deep loams, tenacious
and at the same time mellow. The land must be
of good quality, and clear of weeds, and much
benefit is derived from top-dressing, with rank
farm-yard manure, the winter variety in cold
latitudes. Not less than four bushels of seed
should be sown on an acre. When they grow
thick, and quickly and closely cover the surface
of the ground, all weeds are smothered, and the
land is most beneficially mellowed. But if the
crop be thin, and leaves open spaces between the
plants, weeds very quickly appear in abundance,
and render the land very foul. In the whole
course of the cropping of land, there is not a
greater evil both to the land and to the farmer,
than a failing crop of vetches — they ought to be
ploughed clown in the early spring ; and on the
other hand, no crop, when it succeeds, is more
advantageous.
Vetches, as green food, are more valuable than
VETCHES.
53
red clover, and horses thrive better when eating
them, than on any other plant, lucerne not ex-
cepted. They are mostly sown on wheat stubbles
or on grass land along with oats,— they are also
used for being ploughed into the land as a ma-
nure. A good hay may be made from them in
favourable seasons. The seeds have been ground
into meal, and baked into bread; but it is very
poor food, and when given to horses, the seeds
have been found to be very heating; and though
they produce a fine glossy coat, they cannot be
recommended for that purpose. In Germany,
they are given to horses, cows, sheep, and swine.
2. Beans.
The word Bean, like all our monosyllabic words,
is of Saxon origin, and signifies an edible pulse.
The plant is a species of the vetch tribe, being
the Vicia Faba of botanists. Latterly, Faba' has
been made to constitute a genus, with one species,
or the Faba Vulgaris, or the Common Cultivated
Bean.
Generic Character -.—Stalks, with several
flowers, very short. Legumes, ascending, tumid,
coriaceous. Leaflets, elliptical, acute, entire. Ten-
dril, abortive. Stipula, half-arrow shaped, toothed
at the base; annual, flowering in June and July.
Stem, three to five feet high. Leaflets, smooth,
larger, acute at each end and alternate. Floweis,
from six to ten, and more, on a short racemose
54
THE LEGUMINOUS PLANTS.
stalk, deliciously fragrant, white, with a broad
black velvet-like spot on each wing. Calyx, whitish,
with ovate taper teeth. Legume, large, thick, ob-
long, pulpy within while unripe, containing four
or five seeds. Said to be a native of Egypt, but
found also in Persia.
The genus Faba differs from Vicia hi the
greater size of the legume, which is coriaceous,
and rather tumid, and in the seeds being oblong,
and in the hilum being terminal.
There are now many kinds or varieties of
beans in use, all derived from one original. The
plant likes a strong moist soil, a whole firm fur-
row, and never thrives better than on a layer.
The seed is generally committed to the earth on
one furrow of tilth, by hand in broad-cast, or in
rows by the dibbling machine. About three
bushels are allowed to an acre; and when drilled,
the crop is horse and hand-hoed, according to the
width of the intervals. Manure is often applied
to beans, laid on in autumn, and ploughed in.
The quantity of seed sown on an acre varies
from two to five bushels ; and the average produce
may be stated at thirty bushels. The quality of
the season has a very great influence on the
production of beans — a wet summer provoking
the undue growth of leaves and stem, and a dry
season stunts the growth in every respect. The
horsc-hoeing of the intervals must commence so
soon as any weeds appear, and may be continued
BEANS.
55
till the height of the stems impedes and stops the
process; the hand-hoeing must accompany the
scuffler, and be continued after the former is given
up, in pulling the tall weeds that afterwards
arise. Wide intervals of twenty-four to twenty-
seven inches are preferable to narrow spaces, in
admitting horse-hoeing, and the latter only the
hand-hoe, which is of very little avail on clay soils.
A very good way of sowing beans in wide inter-
vals, consists in drilling the land with one furrow
of the common plough, sowing the beans by hand,
which fall into the hollows, and then reversing
the drills, or harrowing the field across. In any
way of spring-sowing, the land must have an
early winter furrow. In the wide drilling sys-
tem, two more furrows will be required in the
spring, so soon as the state of the weather will
permit. When the seed is dibbled at narrow
intervals, the winter furrows must be well har-
rowed. Beans may be sown from the beginning
of January to the end of March, and later in
some certain localities.
The shrivelling of the leaves of the haulm,
and the black colour of the pod, or legume, with
the hardened state of the seeds, give notice of
the maturity of the bean crop. They are most
generally cut by the sickle low by the ground,
tied into sheaves, and built into thatched ricks,
or lodged in barns. The straw and the grain
are very easily separated by flail, or by machine,
56 THE LEGUMINOUS PLANTS.
and winnowed for use. The sheaves are tied by
straw-ropes, or tarred twine, which lasts for years
on being preserved for use. Pease in mixture
are not unfrequently sown with beans, and then
the pea-straw serves very conveniently for being
made into ropes to tie the beans.
The straw of beans when well harvested, is very
particularly relished by horses, and the husks of
the legumes by sheep ; and it forms in any shape,
a very useful short litter for swine in sties, and
for sheep confined in cots. In a good state, it is
reckoned equal to the best hay of any kind, or
quality.
The broad-cast crops of beans are equally
valuable with the drilled; but the true object of
cultivation being to yield crops in succession,'
that system must be adopted, which prepares the
land by pulverisation and the admission of air.
Hence, the drilling of beans at wide intervals is
recommended. But when they are sown on clay
lands after grass, and previous to a summer
fallow, they must be sown broad-cast, for the
quality of the land admits no preparation for the
drill or the dibble. When drilled at wide inter-
vals, cleaned, and the land pulverised, bean culture
forms a most excellent preparative for wheat,
which is sown on the bean grattans with one
ploughing, in broad-cast, or in drill. The suc-
cess of a culmiferous crop after a leguminous
one, as in the case of wheat following beans, has
VETCHES.
57
afforded to scientific theorists, a confirmatory
example of the exudatory system, which sup-
poses that plants of an entirely different kind
live and thrive on the feces, or exudations of
another. Be this as it may, the practical fact was
known long before the theory was dreamed of.
The chief use of beans in this country is to
feed horses, for which they are very usefully
mixed with oats, as they contain the tanning
principle, and tend to bind the muscular frame.
They are also used in fattening hogs, bruised and
unbruised: they make the flesh very firm. Bean
meal is used in fattening oxen; mixed with
water, and given to cows, it greatly increases the
quantity of milk. Some beans are also mixed
with new wheats in grinding. Millers generally
contrive to use a due proportion, pretending that
the clammy new wheats will not grind well
without some such mixture.
The proportion of nutritive matter in beans,
compared with other grains, is thus given by
Einhof: —
By weight, or in a bushel.
Wheat . . .
74 per cent., about 47 lbs
Eye . . - .
70
,, 39 ,,
Barley . . .
65
i) 33 ,,
Oats .. . .
58
,, 23 ,,
Beans . . •
68
!> 45 ,,
Pease . . .
75
49 „
French beans .
84
5! 54 ,,
58 THE LEGUMINOUS PLANTS.
The ashes of beans contain : —
Phosphate of potash and soda . . . 68.59
„ of lime 9.35
„ of magnesia 19.11
Sulphate of potash and common salt . 1 .84
Silicate of potash 1.11
100.00
The ashes of bean-straw contain in 100 .
parts : —
Carbonate of potash . . . 3.32
,, of soda .... 6.06
Sulphate of potash .... 32.4
Common salt 0.28
Carbonate of lime .... 39.50
Magnesia 1.92
Phosphate of lime .... 6.43
,, of magnesia . . 6.66
,, of iron and alum . 3.49
Silica 7.97
Beans contain in 10,000 parts, about 200 parts
of potash.
The medicinal qualities of beans are said to be
nutritive, but flatulent; the pods yield a water
held good against the gripes in children. The
PEAS.
59
bean has been used as a succedaneum to coffee,
which, in principle, it much resembles — only
that it contains but half the quantity of oil.
Flatulency is occasioned by the great quantity
of air they contain, and which is extricated, and
cannot be again absorbed during their digestion
in the stomach. The expansion of beans in grow-
ing, is very great, one bean being sufficient to
raise a weight of 100 lbs.
3. Peas.
The word Pea, of which Peas and Peasen are
the plural, is derived from the Saxon, pifa. It is
the pisum of the Latins; the piso of the
Italians, and the pois of the French. The word
pisum is deduced from the Greek nriaov. De
Theis thinks the Celtic pis is the common root of
this word in all languages.
The Pea plant belongs to the class and order
Diadelphia Decandria of Linnaeus ; and to the
natural order Leguminosa of J ussieu.
Generic Characters -.—Calyx, perianthi-
um, one leaved, five-cleft, acute, permanent:
the two upper segments shorter. Corolla, papili-
onaceous ; standard, very broad, obcordate, re-
flex, emarginatewith a point— wings two, round-
ish, converging, shorter than the standard — keel
compressed, semilunar, shorter than the wings.
60
THE LEGUMINOUS PLANTS.
Stamina, ^laments, diadelphous ; one, simple,
superior, flat oval-shaped ; and nine, awl-shaped
below the middle, united into a cylinder which
is closer at top. Anthera, roundish. Pistil-
lum, , germen, . oblong, compressed. Style, as-
cending, triangular, membranaceous, keeled, with
the sides bent outward. Stigma, growing to
the upper angle, oblong, villose. Pericarpium,
legume large, long, roundish, or compressed
downwards, with the top acuminate upwards, one-
celled, two-valved. Seeds, several, globular.
Essential Character Style, triangular,
keeled and downy at the upper side ; two upper
segments of the calyx broadest. .Stamens, in
distinct sets.
Some botanists admit three, and others describe
five species of the Pea.— I. Pi sum sativum, or
Common Pea.— 2. Pisum arvense, the Field,
or Grey Pea.— 3. Pisum fulvum, or Tawny
Flowered Pea. — i. Pisum maritimum, or Sea
Pea. — 5. Pisum ochrus, or Wing Pea.
Our description is limited to the first species,
or the Cultivated Pea. Footstalks, cylindrical.
Stipula, rounded and crenate at the base. Stalks,
bearing several flowers. Root, annual, slender,
fibrous. Stems, hollow whilst young, brittle,
branched, smooth, weak, climbing by terminat-
ing tendrils. Leaves, abruptly pinnate, composed
usually of two pairs of leaflets, which are oval
and smooth. Stipula, large, surrounding the
PEAS.
61
stem or branch. Flowers, lateral, two or three
together on long peduncles ; corolla, white, or
greenish-white, purple, or variegated. Legumes,
commonly in pairs, about two inches long, of
an oblong form, smooth, swelling at the straight
suture, where the seeds are fastened, flattened
next the other suture, which arches especially
towards the end. Seeds, from five or six, to eight
or nine, commonly globular, but in some varieties,
irregular, or approaching to a cubic form ;
smooth, white, yellow, blue, grey, brown, or
greenish, with a small oblong umbilicus. The
colour of the whole plant is glaucous, or
hoary-green, from a white meal which covers it.
LimiEeus remarks that the leaflets are condupli-
cate, or doubled together. It is a native of the
South of Europe, and Dr. Sibthorp found it, appa-
rently wild, in various parts of Greece. It is
sometimes found in China, and in Cochin China ;
but that is not very frequent, and it may not be
indigenous. According to Thunberg, it is cul-
tivated in Japan.
Like other favoured plants, the Pea has many
varieties that have been produced by soil and
climate, and by casual impregnation. The Grey
or Field Pea produces most straw, and is pre-
ferred in all late and high latitudes ; in dry and
early situations, the Yellow-marl or Hastings
Pea obtains the ascendancy.
The Pea plant affects a deep warm earthy
62
THE LEGUMINOUS PLANTS.
loam, where it grows luxuriantly, and yields
very abundantly. They are usually sown broad-
cast, or in drills of one foot apart, on wheat or
barley stubbles, or on grass layers. As a drilled
crop, the use of Peas is not very evident ; for
the plant is procumbent, and soon falls down,
covers the intervals, and excludes at an early
season any further use of the hoe. The same
objection applies to the common vetch, but not
to the bean, owing to the upright and permanent
nature of the stem. The great use of Peas and
Vetches, as a smothering crop, consists in their
locking together by means of the tendrils and
the leaves, completely covering the ground and
killing the weeds, thereby producing a finely
mellowed surface of ground. For this purpose,
the seed must be sown very thick, not under
four bushels to an acre; and this mellow surface
of the land, produced by a closely matted cover-
ing that excludes air and moisture for the
growth of weeds, may be preferable to the
condition of the land that is produced by scarify-
ing and hoeing, even when possible from the
nature of the plant to effect that purpose.
The season of sowing peas extends from the
beginning of January to the end of March, and
it is essential that the seed have a dry bed. The
maturity of the crop is evidenced by the ripeness
of the pods on the lower part of the stalk; the
crop must be then reaped, as a further ripeness
PEAS.
63
opens the pods and occasions much loss by
bursting and shedding. The reaping is done by
the hand-sickle, partly cutting, and partly pull-
ing the stems from the ground; the crop is then
rolled into small heaps, where they lie until suf-
ficiently dried, when they are carried and built
into ricks, or lodged in barns. The processes
of thrashing and winnowing are very easily per-
formed, owing to the slight attachment of the
parts of the plant to each other in a dried state.
The average return of peas on an acre of land,
may be stated at thirty bushels.
Peas contain much farinaceous and saccharine
matter, and are highly nutritious; no other
leguminous plant surpasses them in this quality,
except the French Bean. But a certain tough-
ness, which makes them adhere to the teeth,
renders the seed of this latter plant disagreeable
to be eaten. The meal of peas has been baked
into bread, and used unmixed. The digestion is
difficult, and it is better mixed with oatmeal, or
barley-meal. Mixed with the skim-milks of the
dairy, there is no better nourishment for young
pigs and for farrowing sows; as such a mixture
very much provokes the milking propensity.
When pigs are weaned, it forms a most proper
food for them. It is also given to bacon hogs;
and notwithstanding the supposed loss when they
are given unbroken, the belief yet obtains, that
in the last month of fattening, they are most
64
THE LEGUMINOUS PLANTS.
useful in that state for the purpose of giving a
firm consistence to the bacon. It has been pro-
posed to malt the seeds for this purpose, and
kiln-dry them slightly, in order to diminish the
flatulent property.
The straw or haulm of peas, when well got, is
an excellent fodder for horses and cattle, and
especially for sheep, who are very fond of the
dry pods, when the seeds are gone by thrashing.
Peas like good lands and in good heart : it is
vain to expect a crop under other circumstances.
Dung is not profitably applied with the pea crop,
as it encourages the growth of the haulm at the
expense of the number of pods. The land must,
therefore, be in previous good heart: a barley
stubble suits well, on which clover seeds have
not been sown, in order to remove to a greater
distance the recurrence of that crop. Peas must
be thickly sown in order to lock together, and
cover the ground : a thin crop of peas, or vetches
invariably leaves the land foul, and in an arid
parched state. So soon as a failure in these crops
is observed, the crop should be ploughed down,
and the land fallowed. Peas, beans, tares, and
barley, sown together, form a very abundant,
and a most useful green crop for soiling all the
animals of the farm. Peas are a very precarious,
but rather a valuable crop.
PEAS. 65
The ashes of peas contain in 100 parts: —
Phosphate of potash 52.78
,, of soda 5.67
„ of lime 10.77
of magnesia . . . . 13.78
Perphosphate of iron 2.46
Sulphate of potash 9.09
Common salt . . .... 3.96
The ashes of pea-straw contain in 100 parts: —
Carbonate of potash 4.16
„ of soda 8.27
Sulphate of potash . . , . . 10.75
Common salt 4.63
Carbonate of lime 47.81
Magnesia 4.05
Phosphate of lime 5.15
,, of magnesia .... 4.37
,, of iron and alum . . 2.10
Silica 7.81
Peas contain in 100 parts: —
Carbon 46.3
Hydrogen .... 6.2
Oxygen .... 40.0
Nitrogen .... 4.2
Ashes 3.1
66
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
Pea-straw contains in 100 parts: —
Carbon 45.8
Hydrogen .... 5.0
Oxygen .... 35.6
Nitrogen .... 2.3
Ashes 11.3
100.0
III. THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
1. TUENIPS.
The Third Division of Plants now comes for
description, containing Turnips and Cabbages,
and some varieties.
The word Turnip is referred to nsepe, Saxon;
napus, Latin; and to turman, Saxon, to turn,
because of its roundness. Both this plant and
cabbages, belong to the genus Brassica, of the
class and order, Tetradynamia Siliquosa of Lin-
nseus, and the natural order, Cruciferce, of Jussieu.
The word Brassica is derived from ftpa^co, or
fipaaaa), Greek, to devour; because the plant is
TURNIPS.
67
eagerly eaten by cattle. Linnaeus derives it from
the same word, and renders it to boil, from its
being a common pot herb. Scaliger conjectures,
that it was originally written "irpacrM'n<;, from
■n-paaia, a division, or a bed in a garden. The
Greeks did not know the word, and very pro-
bably, it is of Latin origin. Varro and Festus
derived it from prcesica, on account of its being-
cut off from the stem. This seems forced, and
the etymology remains uncertain.
The Generic Character. — Calyx, peri-
anthium, four-leaved, erect; leaflets lanceolate,
linear, concave, channelled, gibbous at the base,
erect, parallel, deciduous. Corolla, tetrapetalous,
cruciform. Petals, subornate, flat, expanding,
entire, gradually lessening into claws nearly the
length of the calyx. Nectareons glands, four,
ovate, of which, one on each side between the
shorter stamens and the pistil, and one on each
side, between the longer stamens and the calyx.
Stamina, filaments, six, subulate, erect; of these,
two opposite ones are of the length of the calyx,
and four are longer. Anthera, erect, acuminate.
Pistillum, germ columnar, the length of the
stamens. Style, short, the thickness of the germ.
Stigma, capitate, entire. Pericarpium, silique,
long, somewhat like the shaft of a column, but
flattened on both sides ; partition, with a prominent
columnar top, two-celled, two-valved; valves
F 2
68
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
shorter than the partition. Seeds, many, glo-
bular.
Essential Character : — Calyx, erect, a
little converging. Seeds, globular. Dissepiment,
prominent. Nectariferous glands, four; a gland
between the shorter stamens and the pistil, and
between the longer and the calyx.
It is distinguished from Sinapis, by its firm
and close calyx, and from Raphanus, by its sili-
quce not being articulated. The distinctive
character is rather obscure, and some of the
species might be referred to other genera. The
Turnip plant is the Brassica rapa. Koot cau-
lescent, orbicular, depressed, fleshy; radical
leaves lyrate, rough; stem leaves very entire,
smooth. Eoot biennial; stem erect, branched,
round, smooth. Koot leaves unequally toothed,
deep green, rough, and jagged, or gashed
almost to the middle. Stem-leaves cordate,
lanceolate, embracing the stem, a little glau-
cous; oblong, pointed, smooth. Flowers yel-
low, and placed on long, slender, smooth,
peduncles. Siliquaa, or pods, cylindrical, seeds
of a reddish brown colour. La Marck reckons
the Turnip and the Eape to be only one species,
and alleges, that the Linnasan specific characters
drawn from the root, afford no real distinction.
Found in a wild state on ditch-banks in
England.
TURNIPS.
69
It appears that the turnip plant Avas known to
the ancients; for Columella frequently recom-
mends rapa for cultivation, both for man and
beast. The first mention of it in England occurs
in 1645, and in 1686, Mr. Ray informs us, that
they were sown for the sake of the roots for
feeding kine in England, and in foreign coun-
tries. The cultivation of turnips originated
chiefly in Norfolk, where a great impulse was
given to its extension by Lord Viscount Town-
shend, about the year 1730, who had seen the
great value of the turnip culture on the con-
tinent, when he was Ambassador extraordinary
to the States-General. It is certain that turnips
were not in cultivation, except for the table, at
the end of the sixteenth century. It seems to have
been known to Theophrastus, the oldest Greek
naturalist, and is mentioned by all the succeeding
Greek and Latin authors who have written on
the natural history of plants, or on subjects of
rural economy; but, like all other cultivated
plants, it has gradually undergone so many
changes, and assumed so many permanent varie-
ties, that it is not easy to form a description that
will apply to the whole, or to discover what
modern plant answers to the description that is
given by these ancient naturalists.
The Turnip plant is naturally inclined to
grow on light loams or sandy lands; but the
growth of it has been gradually extended to
70
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
soils of a heavier denomination, that have been
rendered more friable by the process of cultiva-
tion. The introduction, and the successfully ex-
tended cultivation of the Turnip, very soon most
completely revolutionised the whole circle of
British husbandry, by increasing both the
quantity and quality of animal and vegetable
food, and by insuring a steadier supply of the
necessaries of life at all seasons of the year.
This abundance and regular supply have had
a most manifest influence in promoting the
development both of the physical and moral
powers of man; forming a most beautiful illus-
tration of the benefits that may be derived from
the investigation and use of the bounties of
nature. Turnips are accounted a very salubrious
food: demulcent, detergent, somewhat laxative
and diuretic, but liable, in weak stomachs, to
produce flatulencies, and sometimes difficult of
digestion ; they relax the bowels, and sweeten
the blood ; the rind is acrimonious. The seeds
have been accounted alexipharmic or diaphoretic,
and have a mildly acrimonious taste, seeming-
ly of the same nature with that of mustard seed,
though rather weaker. The juice, well fermented,
affords by distillation an ardent spirit; and the
liquor, pressed out from them after boiling, is
sometimes used medicinally, in coughs and
disorders of the breast. The young leaves and
buds of the Turnip are gathered and eaten under
TURNIPS.
71
the name of Turnip tops. The root consists of
a large mass of soft cellular tissue, in which
starch and sugar is deposited. The root of the
Turnip contains a very large proportion of
water. The latest analysis of 100 parts of the
turnip, gave —
Water 89
Unazotised matters (starch and sugar) 9
Albumen 1
Inorganic matter 1
100
Turnips contain in 100 parts: —
Carbon 42.9
Hydrogen 5.5
Oxygen 42.3
Nitrogen 1.7
Ashes 7.6
100.0
The merit of every drill system of husbandry,
and of every drilling machine, is due to the
name of Mr. Jethro Tull, a gentleman of Berk-
shire, who derived the idea of drilling crops
from the chance practice of gardeners ; and the
notion of drill machines taking up and throwing
off into rows the seeds of plants from the gyra-
tions of a revolving spindle, was presented to
72
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
his acute and vigorous mind, by the rotatory
mechanism of an organ. Like most of the first
inventors of any originality, he failed in prac-
tice; which may have arisen from the want of
the combination of favourable circumstances that
are essential to the success of any undertaking,
and to which the most brilliant genius is com-
pelled to succumb. But having given publicity
to his ideas in the form of an octavo volume,
they met the eye of a Captain Pringle, who
resided near Coldstream, on the Scotch side of
the Tweed, and who amused his retirement with
agricultural pursuits. The system again failed,
owing to the soil being wholly unfit for the
growth of turnips, and to the want of a proper
conception of the theory, — which had not had
time to be associated with and suited to its practice ;
a result only to be obtained by observation and
actual experience. About the same time, a young
man of an adventurous spirit, named Dawson, son
of a farmer of that name, who lived at Harpertown,
near Kelso, on Tweedside, made a tour of some
English counties; and in Norfolk he found the
cultivation of the turnips in progress, and
observed the practice of yoking two horses
a-breast. Being familiar with Tull's ideas, and
Mr. Pringle's practice, he conceived the theory of
drilling the land with two horses abreast, and of
sowing the turnip-seeds on narrow ridges which
had been formed by the plough and reversed
TURNIPS.
73
upon the dung. His first attempts completely
failed; the soil of Harperton farm being a stiff
clay, and wholly unfit for the purpose. But
being possessed of the means to effect his de-
sign, of the genius to conceive it, and of the
energy and perseverance to execute it, he was
fortunate enough to get possession of a farm
called " Frogden," situated on the rising grounds
that form the detached bases of the Cheviot
hills, where the soil and the climate are alike
favourable to the growth of esculent vegetables.
The proximity of the hills induces frequent and
moderate rains; and the soil is mostly a sharp
loamy gravel, or a loam of moderately deep
composition, and formed of materials very finely
blended, and of very productive elements. In
the whole range of the British Isles, there are
not any where to be found more useful, or
quicker turnip lands, than on the cultivated
undulating grounds that surround the range of
the " Cheviot Hills." In such a situation, Mr.
Dawson succeeded beyond all precedent, having
introduced the use of two-horse ploughs guided
by reins without a driver — the drilling of the
turnip crop by ploughs thus equipped — and the
use of the roots in feeding cattle and sheep.
This great revolution in farming happened about
1760.
The field is yet shown where Mr. Dawson in
person, with the reins in his hands, drew the
74
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
turnip drills with two horses yoked a-breast,
and the author of this volume, during his prac-
tical education in that country, rode a distance
of twelve miles to gratify his curiosity by a sight
of the field.
The system has been improved by several
very eminent successors of Mr. Dawson; and,
as the best judges allow it to be the most per-
fect practice of turnip-farming that is known,
our description will be limited to the per-
formance of it, or the drilling mode by forming
ridgelets.
Turnips form the second crop in the most ap-
proved rotation on light lands, and thrive best
after oats, which are most generally the first crop
after grass, which begins the course. From
whatever cause it may arise, the fact is certain,
that turnips thrive better after a crop of oats,
than after any other crop, either culmiferous or
leguminous. So soon as the harvest is complet-
ed, the oat stubble is ploughed, usually to the
depth of five or six inches, the general run of
turnip lands not admitting a deeper furrow,
owing to the shallowness of the staple. In
this state, it lies till March, when it is cross-
ploughed. The harrows are then applied, and
continued, until the clods refuse to be broken by
the action of the harrow, or pass unreduced bet-
ween the tines of the implement. The roll is
then used in dry weather, and the harrows be-
TURNIPS.
76
hind the roll, in order to raise to the surface the
weeds that are now separated from the clods
by the action of the roll. The weeds and stones
are then very carefully picked off by hand, and
removed from the field by carts. So soon as con-
venience will permit, within fourteen clays, if by
any means possible, the land undergoes a similar
process of ploughing, harrowing, and rolling, and
of hand-picking ; and another similar process in
fourteen days after the last. Lands intended to
be sown with Swedish turnips in May, should
have received two clean earths by the first of
that month, and get another about a week before
the sowing commences ; the lands to be sown
with common turnips in June, should get two
or three earths by the beginning of that month.
Four clean earths are at an average reckoned
sufficient to clean lands, and to bring them into a
proper state of pulverisation.
Before the land is drilled, the complete pulver-
isation must have been effected by the repeated
processes before mentioned, and every weed and
stone removed: the dung from the farm-yards
must have been laid in oblong heaps on the head-
land, or near to the gateway, and turned over in
order to commence the fermentation, about eight
or ten days before the use of it is intended. Upon
this fermentation being produced at the proper
time, and upon its going on briskly at the time
when the dung is deposited in the drills, and the
70
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
seed brought within reach of the exhalations and
combinations that are taking place during the
fermentative process, the success of the turnip
crop very much depends, Avhile in its embryo
state of existence. On the day before the sowing
is intended to be commenced, one or two expert
ploughmen are sent to begin the process of
drilling, in order to give a little advance to that
most important process. The' line or direction in
which it is wished the drills should lie being
fixed upon, a straight furrow is drawn in that
line, which is generally used to favour the ready
escape of any water, that may fall on the field
during autumn and winter; Two furrows at a
distance of sixty to one hundred yards from each
other, are drawn at right angles to the first drawn
furrow; and across these furrows, the extent of
the intervening spaces are carefully measured for
being "drilled. Thus, if the drills be twenty-
eight inches in width, an extent of twenty-one
yards will contain twenty-seven drills, which
space of twenty-one yards is marked out by a
straight furrow, parallel to the one first drawn.
This marking out of the land by furrows, enables
any number of ploughs to work at one time.
The plough thaVdraws the first furrow, returns
in the hollow it made, with the horses walking
on each side, and throws up a ridgelet of soil,
from the side of the mouldboard having passed
both ways. It then turns down the other side of
TUBNIPS.
77
the furrow, the near-side horse -walking in the
furrow, and the far-side horse travelling on the
undrilled land, the plough going between them,
and making a furrow at the required distance
from the other. Any number of ploughs may-
follow each other, each plough making a furrow
and a drill by one operation, or two drills in
going and returning. The spaces of ground
being marked out by parallel furrows as before
mentioned, mistakes may be committed by mak-
ing the drills wider or narrower at the ends of
the field, and thus losing the equality of width,
though the parallelism may be preserved. To
prevent this awkwardness in closing the spaces
of ground, frequent measuring of the spaces at
each end with the ploughstaff, which each
ploughman carries with him, is necessary, and on
which is marked the fixed width of the drills.
If the space be found unequal at the ends, he
must begin in time to extend or contract gradu-
ally and imperceptibly the width of the drills,
and thus accomplish an equal and even termina-
tion of the measured space of ground.
The common plough is now most generally pre-
ferred for the purpose of drilling, on account of the
narrow-pointed share being able to penetrate the
stifHsh bottoms of the best turnip lands, and raise
fresh soil, in which to deposit the seed, on which
the safety of the turnip crop so very much depends.
The double mould-board plough answers the pur-
7S
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
pose very well on light lands and loose sub-soils,
but whenever the subsoil is firm and approaches
to clay, the two wings of the share prevent its
penetrating stiffish substances, and the resistance
of the two mould-boards throw it upwards,
despite all the exertions of the ploughman. Con-
sequently it only moves the dry and frequently
cloddy surface, and is most decidedly inferior to
the common plough.
In the best arrangements of turnip-sowing,
two ploughs are employed in opening the drills,
and will perform eight to ten acres daily. The
most expert ploughmen are selected for this pur-
pose. These ploughs, having had one half-day's
start, the next morning the process of dunging
and sowing commences. Five or six one horse
carts will be required to bring forward the dung
according to the distance of the heap in the field;
one man to each cart to fill the dung into the
carts at the heap ; four lads to drive the carts to
and fro, and another to lead steadily along the
drills the cart that is discharging the dung — a
steady man to pull from the cart the dung into
the three drills, into heaps of equal size, and at
regular distances — three persons provided with
light forks to spread the dung along the drills,
and a fourth in company to divide the heaps of
dung regularly into three portions for the three
drills that are being dunged. Three ploughs are
employed in reversing or splitting the drills, and
TURNIPS.
79
covering the dung. The far-side horse walks in
the furrow, and the near-side one walks on the
top of the drill on the left hand of the plough-
man, leaving an intervening drill for the plough
to split and cover the dung. For this purpose,
the main tree of the plough is five feet long,
which stretches over two drills, and by enabling
the horses' to walk wide apart, the near-side one
on the top of a drill, removes the objection of
the horses feet jostling the clung about, when
walking in the furrow. These three ploughs
follow each other; in going out, they split a
drill, and cover the dung — in returning, they
turn to the left hand, and with a horse walking
in each furrow, and the plough moving in an
intervening one, they back up the drill and com-
plete the process. So soon as a sufficient number
of drills are finished, which may be by eight
o'clock in the morning, the work commencing at
six, the turnip-sower enters under the guidance
of a steady person, drawn by one horse, sowing
two drills together, and finishing four in going
and returning. If the season be very dry, and the
land cloddy, rolling of the drills after sowing is
most essential — in damp weather and moist
soils, the light roll that is attached to the sower,
may be sufficient. But in the case of cloddy
soils and a dry season, the quick rolling of the
drills is most essential — it breaks the clods,
presses the seeds close to the dung, and in imbib-
80
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
ing and retaining moisture, it acts as a lock and
key. Without that operation, the seeds lie
among dry clods, or parched dust; and in many
cases they never vegetate at all, from the want
of moisture and of that degree of compressure
which is necessary to attach the most tender ger-
mination to the soil or future bed.
The most essential and indispensable requisite
in sowing turnips, is dispatch or quickness of
execution in getting the different processes per-
formed, so as to keep in store for the use of the
young plant, the moisture that may be in the
soil, and to prevent it from escaping. The time
of the year is the driest in the whole cycle — the
sun is generally hot and parching, and rains are
often infrequent, and fall at distant intervals. In
such cases, and they are very general, the mois-
ture in the land forms the only dependance; and,
in order to retain it for the use of the young
plant, a very considerable exertion becomes
necessary. After the beginning, the drills must
be opened only half an hour before they are closed
again, and the seed sown, in order to prevent a
long exposure of the land to drought ; the dung-
cart must be close upon the drilling ploughs —
the covering ploughs working within three drills
of the dung being spread, and the seed-sowing
machine finishes the process of depositing the
seed upon every two drills, immediately as the
ploughs leave them. The rolling of the drills, as
TURNIPS.
81
above recommended, should be finished each
night during dry weather.
Turnips should be sown thickly, not less than
three or four pounds to an acre, according to the
humidity or dryness of the season. When the
tender plants stand singly and distant, they grow
slowly, and are more exposed to the attacks of
enemies : when growing thick together, the plants
shoot up much more rapidly, get sooner beyond
harm's reach, and attain the state fit for being
hoed or singled out.
The above arrangement consequently requires
farms of at least four hundred acres, and employ-
ing eight or more ploughs. On smaller occupa-
tions, a more lax execution is unavoidable. The
drills being opened on one day, and dunged and
closed on the next, exposes the land to drought;
and hence arise the very great advantages that
have attended the cultivation of turnips on farms
of four hundred to six hundred acres, simply
because they afford the quantity of strength that
is necessary to effect.the combined purposes that
have been above detailed. Combination of force
has a most magical effect on the spirits of the
labourers themselves — but it requires a master
mind of its kind to arrange and to direct it, that
all the parts of the system may act simultaneously,
that order and regularity be maintained, and
that no one part of the process fall behind the
other, or push too fast on the one before it, by
Cr
82
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
having an undue portion of strength for the pur-
pose. When properly arranged and conducted, it
forms the most beautiful specimen of a combined
operation that is anywhere to be seen; and the
author yet recollects with pleasure his tyro days
when he took an active part in the enlivening
and productive process. The great and only
drawback, is the want of proper remuneration to
the labourer, the stay and support of the whole
operation. A more equal distribution of profits
is much needed.
The custom yet lingers of sowing turnips in
broad-cast by hand on the furrow which covers
the dung ; and in moist seasons, and where the
land is clear of weeds, occasional fair crops are
thus obtained. But the mode admits no good
opportunity of eradicating weeds, or of pul-
verising the soil; and as turnip-fallows are as
much intended for that purpose, as for the pro-
duction of a crop, the practice is not to be
recommended. Another mode consists in sow-
ing the seed in drills on thfi flat surface of the
land, after it is got ready by cleaning, by means
of machines with lengthened coulters, which
make ruts in the ground, and deposit at the
same time any kind of artificial manure, and
either mixed with the seed, or falling from a
foregoing coulter, and thrown down from a
different range of cups. A very great improve-
ment has been lately introduced in the drop-drill,
TURNIPS. 83
"which deposits the manure and the seeds
mixed, by falling into a cylinder from differ-
ent funnels. The cylinder is provided with a
circular ring and valves, at the distance of nine
inches, the average distance at which turnips
stand in the rows : the valves are held shut by
the circular ring, till, in the course of revolution,
they come to the vacuum of nine inches, when
they fly open and discharge a bulb of manure
and seed at the , above-mentioned distance. The
first germination of the seed has help at hand,
by being in close contact with the stimulating
manure. Bones in a dry state, or artificially
heated, or dissolved in acids, as they are now
prepared, are very beneficially used by means of
the drop-drill, which saves from the usual quan-
tity that is deposited in a continuous stream.
Bones, as a manure, being chiefly suited for light
lands, the drills are well made by one furrow of
the common plough, on which the drop-drill
deposits the manure and seeds mixed, and is
finished by a roll following the sower on the
same day, or soon after. The drilling of the
land is preferable to the sowing on flat surface,
as it affords room for the scarifying process, and
the turnip plants being placed high on the drills,
escape from being buried by the earth falling
upon them in the flat-surface method. It is now
customary to lay on the stubble of the culmi-
ferous crop the farm-yard dung, and to plough
G 2
84 THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
it into the land, where it lies during the winter.
In the spring, the land is prepared by fallowing
in the usual way, drilled, and a quantity of
artificial manure is applied with the seed. In
this way, the land will have the benefit of the
intimate commixture between the soil and the
dung, that is effected by means of the working
of the land; but it will lose the benefits of the
gaseous vapours that are disengaged during the
fermentation that is going on when the dung is
laid in the drills, and the seed deposited within
reach of their influence. Early lands and dry
climates only admit the application. In such
localities, turnip lands are very much benefited
by being fallowed in part during the previous
autumn, as the spring operations are thereby
much forwarded, especially in the case of
Swedish turnips, potatoes, and beet-root. The
land, from undergoing less working in the spring,
is better provided with moisture, which it im-
bibes during the winter; and a part of the
operations of fallowing being performed, the
process of planting the early green crops is
very much expedited. Still it requires a dry
climate and early harvests, to admit the autumnal
operations.
We must not omit to mention a very excellent
way of raising turnips on all stiff-bottomed lands,
whatever the earthy constituent may be which
causes the adhesive tenacity of the soil. When
TUKNIPS
85
such lands are wrought by fallowing, and drilled
in the usual way, the soil is reduced into a mere
mass of clods, which the action of the harrow
and the roll is unable to reduce to a smaller size.
At the dry season of sowing turnips, the moisture
is completely dissipated from land in that condi-
tion; and when the seed is deposited in the
drills, it lies among dry clods, and no vegetation
takes place. In the method we now recommend,
the land is fallowed and cleaned by repeated
ploughings, and laid in a flat state. The farm-
yard dung, in a rotted state, is then laid on the
ground, spread, and ploughed under, and the
land laid into ridges of from six to twelve feet.
A fine tilth is then produced by harrowings per-
formed by the implements attached to a main
tree, stretching across the ridges, and drawn by
horses walking in the furrows, and yoked in
"tandem" fashion. When the surface has thus
been made fine, the turnip-seed is sown in
broad-cast, and bush-harrowed. Or it may be
deposited by a machine with lengthened coulters,
which make ruts in the ground, and of a number
to cover the ridge. The weeds on such land are
not very abundant, and the rows may be eighteen
inches in width, or in broad-cast as well. The
narrow ridges with the frequent furrows keep
the land in a dry state. This method of turnip-
farming is pursued with much success on the
Eoyal Farms at Windsor, under the direction of
86
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
Major-General Wemyss, who excels both in
arable farming and in the animal department.
We recommend the above method very much to
farmers who possess lands of a mellow top on a
stiff bottom.
In ordinary seasons, the turnip plants will
have attained a good size in the course of six
weeks from the time of being sown, and will
show an abundance of large rough leaves. The
horse-hoe, drawn by one horse, must be first
employed to cut the bottoms and sides of the
intervals between the drills; and the next day,
the hoers may enter. Each person is provided
with a hoe made of thin iron, about nine inches
long, and four inches wide ; on the middle top
of which an eye is attached, which fits into a
rounded wooden shaft of such a length as allows
the wielder of it to stand upright when the hoe
rests upon the ground. A number of women
and lads being thus equipped, enter the field
under the charge of a steady experienced person,
who appoints some one of the band who is well
known to him, to go foremost in the process,
and to lead the work at a steady and uniform
rate. The foremost hoer commences the work,
and the others follow in succession ; each person
stands with a foot on each side of a drill, and
hoes, or thins the one immediately before him,
and the drill which he bestrides is hoed by
the person immediately behind him. By this
TURNIPS.
87
arrangement, the band stands in a slanting direc-
tion, in order to avoid the hoed drills being
trampled by the feet of the hoers, and who
for this end are not allowed to pass each other.
The thinning of the turnip plants is effected by
the hoe, or implement being passed through and
pulled back at the distance of its length in the
row of plants, leaving one of the best plants to
stand for the crop at the distance prescribed.
Pushing and drawing are the terms commonly
used to designate the process of hoeing, by
which the hoe is pushed through the row of
turnips, and pulled back, leaving a plant be-
tween the incisions; all the weeds, and the useless
plants, being pulled into the hollow of the
intervals, where they are killed by the process
of scuffling. To perform this process adroitly,
requires a length of practice, and very much
attention is paid to it by the best turnip farmers.
The set-out turnips are generally laid, or made to
fall to one side of the drill, usually to the off-side
from the hoer; and the smallest hold that the
root can have of the soil, is reckoned sufficient.
The drill is formed into a narrow ridgelet by the
workings of the hoe, and forms a very pleasing
appearance when the crop of plants is regular, of
one size, and all neatly laid to one side. The plants
very soon recover an erect position, and cover
the drill with the leaves. The second operation
of the scuffler afterwards commences, which cuts
88
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
up all the weeds in the intervals. The hoers
follow, standing in the furrows, and cut the weeds
that escape the scuffler, and rectify the thinning
process where any imperfection has happened.
Some lands will require a third scuffling and a
third hoeing; but it is not of common occurrence.
The earthing up of turnips by the double mould-
board plough is not now practised, as the earth
touching the bulb of the turnip was found to
encourage the shooting of lateral fibres, which
impart a bitter coarseness to the turnip, and
prevent the growth of the bulb. The best
scufHer that is known at present, is Morton's
expanding horse-hoe, constructed on the prin-
ciple of the parallel ruler, which places the face
of the cutting coulters always in a straight line
looking forward. It is provided with two duck-
footed shares for scarifying the bottom of the
drills; one being placed in the forepart of the
implement, and the other in the hindmost part,
which two positions most effectually cut and
destroy every weed that grows. The expanding
wings contain each three cutters, which are
ranged in a rising tier obliquely from the bottom
cutter to the side of the row of turnip plants, so
that no part of the interval can escape being cut
and stirred. It is the most effectual scarifier yet
known, as, from its weight and form, it takes a
good hold of stiff-bottomed lands, in which
property the lighter horse-hoes are very much
deficient.
TURNIPS.
89
The land being wholly cleaned of weeds by
horse and hand-hoeing, twice or thrice repeated,
the turnip plants are then allowed to grow
unmolested, and in most cases, they quickly
cover the surface, and smother the weeds. But
if any strong and tall weeds do arise, they must
be pulled by hand. A thick crop of plants kills
weeds, and shades the ground, which has a very
strong fertilising effect, by excluding light and
producing putrefaction. On the contrary, thin
crops of every kind encourage the growth of
weeds, by leaving open spaces of ground where
they can grow; and by admitting the rays of the
sun, the land is exsiccated and hardened. Hence
arises the double loss from bad crops; the loss in
the quantity of produce, and the loss arising from
the deteriorating effects on the land.
In the end of the month of October, and
almost universally by the first of November,
turnips are required for use. The roots and tops
are very generally cut off in the field; the bulbs
are carted to the farm-yard, and given in cribs
entire or cut into slices as food for cattle. Three
drills are sometimes carried away, and three left
to be eaten on the ground by sheep. Sometimes
the whole crop is consumed by sheep on the field
where it grows. The eating of the turnips
begins at one side of the field, and a space of the
ground is surrounded in a square form with
flakes, or hurdles, in which the sheep are con-
90
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
fined. When the bulbs are eaten close to the
ground, the roots are picked up by hand, when
they are eaten by the animals nearer to the
rind. The fold is then moved and placed on
fresh ground, and the same order is observed
over the field. In this way the sheep are allowed
to range back on the cleared- ground, and
will always incline to lie on one place, by
which means, the excrements are unequally dis-
tributed over the ground. To remedy this
defect, a night-fold may be placed behind the
feeding-ground in which the sheep are confined,
for the purpose of voiding their dung and urine,
and which, being regularly moved every two
days, will ensure an equal manuring to the land.
A slanting covering of tarpauling cloth may be
thrown over the fold, in order to protect the
animals from any extreme violence of the
weather. But the eating of turnips on the
ground by sheep in any way, supposes a very dry
soil, and a genial climate. The animal is natu-
rally impatient of wetness, and likes a dry bed.
On the damp poachy loams on which the best
crops of turnips are produced, the animal stands
and lies in wetness and mud; the bulbs are
defiled with the dung and urine of the animals,
and are, in consequence, very much wasted. A
better plan may probably be found in oarting
the whole crop of turnips (the tap-root being
always cut off) to fields of stubble, or lea, and
TUENIPS.
91
spreading them thinly and regularly over the
ground, where the sheep can eat the bulbs in a
clean state, and where they stand on clean firm
ground, instead of mud and mire. By this way,
each field on a farm will, in its turn, receive the
benefit of the animals' dung and treading, with
the only difference of its being in an unploughed
instead of an arable state. But on dry lands
that are favoured by a genial climate, no greater
improvement has ever happened in the agricul-
tural world, than the consuming of turnips on
the ground by sheep. Another mode is prac-
tised, of cutting into slices the bulbs of the
turnips, which are given to the sheep on the
ground in wooden troughs. But the utility of
cutting turnips into slices for the use of cattle
and sheep, may be fairly questioned. The vola-
tile juices escape, from exposure ; and, in eating
the slices, the natural quantity of saliva is not
engendered, which is so necessary for the diges-
tion of the food, and the secretion of nutrition.
A very fair example may be quoted, in an apple
being much more juicy and agreeable when
bitten by the human mouth, than when it is cut
into pieces by a knife. The case seems exactly
parallel.
It is beneficial to have a store of turnips, to
provide against the difficulty of getting them
from the fields during the snows and frosts ; and
for this purpose, the bulbs are laid in a longitu-
92
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
dinal^ heap on dry ground at the farmery,
tapering to a narrow top of about four feet in
height, and the sides thatched with straw. The
light covering admits the air, to prevent fer-
mentation and putrefaction, and prevents the frost
from inflicting any material damage. Common
turnips may be kept in a wholesome state for
one month in this manner; and the hardier
varieties may be kept for six months and more.
The most useful varieties of the turnip, are
the White Globe, the Green Globe, and the
Aberdeen Yellow. The Swedish turnip, or
Rutabaga, is the most useful of all, as it resists
the hardest frosts without injury. It requires
the best lands, and heavy manuring, and to be
early sown; from the middle of May into the
first week in June. The White Globe is used
from October to January; the Green Globe
from that date to March, when the Swedes and
Yellows come into use, and extend to June,
when properly stored.
The nutritive powers of the different varieties
of turnips, have been stated as follows:—
Grains.
64 drs. of the Swedish turnip, afford of
nutritive matter \\q
, 64 drs. of the Common White turnip . 83
Being nearly as 3 to 2.
TURNIPS. 93
The chief disease, or enemy to which the
turnip is exposed, is the Fly, the Altica nemorum
of entomologists, a little insect belonging to the
order Coleoptera. They are bred from larva
deposited in the fields, and there are five or six
broods in a summer. They love sunshine and
heat, and eat most voraciously the first smooth
leaves, or cotyledons of the turnip. No one
remedy has yet been found against this destruc-
tive insect; many have been suggested, but not
one has succeeded. The only plausible one
consists in having the land and manure in a
fine state of preparation, so as to push the
young plant into the rough, or second leaf, when
it is beyond the power of its enemy. The
destruction by this insect is often very great, and
most complete; often devouring a whole field in
a very few hours. In such cases, the field
should be put under a fresh tilth without delay,
and fresh seeds sown.
The latest analysis of turnips, by Dr. Lyon
Playfair, gave in 100 parts: —
Water ' 89
Unazotised matter (starch and sugar) 9
Albumen 1
Inorganic Matter 1
100
!J4
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
The very great quantity of water that is con-
tained in the turnip, and the absence of the nu-
tritive elements in any quantity, leaves us in very
great doubt whence the value of the turnip pro-
ceeds in the process of fattening of animals. But,
whence or how it comes, the fact is certain.
The peculiar combination of the elements may
take the place of quantity.
2. Cabbages.
The word Cabbage is derived from Cabus,
French; Cabuccio, Italian; Kabis-Kraut, German;
all from the Latin word Caput, the head.
Linnaeus suggests the Greek word koXov, cibus, or
food; and Mr. Home Tooke thinks that our word
Cabbage may be derived from the Greek word
/ca/3r) food. The form of the top part of the cabbage
plant so very much resembling a head, shows the
Latin word Caput to be the original. The
French word Caboche, also signifies a head.
The Cabbage plants form the genus Brassica of
botanists, the derivation and meaning of which
word, and also the scientific and natural classifi-
cation and distinction of that family of plants,
have been given under the preceding article of
" Turnips."
The varieties of Cabbages are very numerous.
Duchesne throws them into six divisions: —
CABBAGES.
95
I. The Wild Cole-wort, which is unaltered by
cultivation: — II. The improved kinds, which do
not form a head, or undergo any remarkable
change in the stalk or root: — III. The proper
Cabbages : — IV. The Cauliflower : — V. The Tur-
nip Cabbage: — VI. The Turnip-rooted Cabbage.
The species most commonly cultivated is the
Brassica oleracea of botanists, or the Common
Cabbage, which has a biennial root, and an up-
right fleshy stalk of oblong roundish leaves,
which are closely gathered into large compact
heads. The leaves are generally plain and entire.
Of the leading varieties of cabbages, the Red-co-
loured is chiefly cultivated for pickling, and the
Common White, or the Yorkshire Drum-head for
winter use.
It is not precisely known, when or how the
Cabbage was first introduced into field-culture —
but it has not long prevailed to any considerable
extent. It was well known to Theophrastus,
and is mentioned by all the succeeding Greek
and Latin authors who have written on the na-
tural history of plants, or on subjects of rural
economy — but, like all other cultivated plants,
it has gradually undergone so many changes, and
assumed so many permanent varieties, that it is
not easy to apply any general description. But
the plant has always a fleshy, cylindric, ascend-
ing caudex, a branched, smooth, and leafy pro-
per caulis or stem — alternate smooth leaves more
9G
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
or less green, or tinctured with red and violet —
the lower ones petioled, runcinate at their hase,
and more or less sinuate — the upper ones, sim-
ple, smaller, and often embracing the stem — and
flowers rather large, yellow, or nearly white, in
upright, loose, and terminating racemes, suc-
ceeded by nearly cylindrical siliques.
It is related, that a beast was sold in Bury, in
1694, for £30, which was fatted with cabbage
leaves. For the table, it has been used from
time immemorial. Having been so much in
favour with the Komans, it could hardly fail of
being introduced by them during the four cen-
turies that they occupied our island. And our
Saxon ancestors certainly had some sort of Cab-
bage, since they called the month of February,
Sprout-cale. All species of Cabbages are supposed
to be hard of digestion, and to produce flatulen-
cies. They tend strongly to putrefaction, and
run into that state sooner than almost any other
vegetable — when putrefied, their smell is like-
wise the most offensive, greatly resembling that
of putrid animal substances. The variety called
Cauliflower, is reckoned the easiest of digestion;
the White Cabbages are the most fetid, and the
red the most emollient or laxative. The latter are
medicinal, and used in decoctions for softening
acrimonious humours in some disorders of the
breast, and in hoarseness. The Germans cut
cabbages into shreds or very small pieces, and,
CABBAGES.
1)7
along with some aromatic herbs and salt, press
them close down in a tub, where they soon fer-
ment, and are eaten under the name of " sour-
crout."
Of the Brassica capitata, or the Common Head-
ing Cabbage, the varieties are numerous, and all
denominated Cabbages, from the circumstance of
the inner leaves lying closely over one another,
till, by degrees, they form a large, compact, glo-
bular, or oval head, some of them attaining a
very large size. From the very numerous list of
the varieties of Cabbages that are constantly
rising into fame, and falling into oblivion, we
select for our agricultural notice, the Common
Headed White Cabbage — the Turnip-rooted Cab-
bage, or the Hungarian Turnip — andthe " Scotch
Kale," or Curly Green Brocoli.
The Common White Cabbage Plant requires, for
its production, the strongest loams or soils, which
possess as much alumina in their composition as
imparts a viscous tenacity, and as much loam or
decomposable humus as can produce a degree ol
mellow friability. The land intended to be
planted with cabbages, is prepared as for turnips,
by being repeatedly ploughed, rolled, and har-
rowed, till the utmost possible pulverisation be
produced — and every stone and weed must be
removed. About the first of May, the land must
be made into drills of thirty inches apart by one
" bout" of the common plough; and as the root
H
98
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
of cabbages penetrates deeply, all the operations
of ploughing and drilling must be deeply and
honestly performed, in order to encourage the
natural propensity of the plant. The drills must
be deep, in order to contain freely, the extra
quantity of dung that is used. The manure or
the farm-yard dung may be applied in a fresh
state, slightly putrescent, but not strawy, and
composed of the excrements of animals, and the
straws of hay, and grains, well wetted and im-
pregnated with the urinary liquids of the farm-
yard. A coarser and grosser form of the manure
is allowed in this case of application to cabbage
plants, than to the tender germination of the
turnip seed — the delicate state of the latter
requires support in the form of exhalations, and ae-
riform combinations that arise from the fermenta-
tive process; while the former or the transplanted
cabbage plant, has acquired from the nursery bed,
a strength to support itself, until the decompo-
sition or the putrefactive process of the dung
comes to its aid. Hence arises tire different con-
dition in which farm-yard dung must be used for
different purposes,— the one requiring an imme-
diate aid from the fermentative process, and the
other being able to wait for the ulterior state of
utility.
The quantity of dung used on an acre of cab-
bages, must be large, not under thirty loads of
one horse carts, or twenty loads of two horses.
CABBAGES. 99
It must be spread evenly along the hollows of
the drills, and then covered without delay; the
plough working as deep as the animals are able
to move the implement. The plants drawn from
the nursery bed, with the extreme end of the
slender fibrous root cut off", are brought to the
field, and immersed in tubs of water with the
roots downwards, whence they are taken as they
are required for use. So soon as the covering-
ploughs have finished two or three drills, persons
provided with dibbles begin to insert the plants
on the top of the drills, at the distance of two
feet from each other, making a hole with the
dibble for the insertion of the plant to the depth
it has stood in the nursery bed, and pushing with
the dibble the sides of the hole together, in order
to give the plant a firm position. It should be
very carefully observed, not to insert the plants
deeper than they stood in the nursery bed, as
a transformation of the skin is the consequence,
and a necessary delay in the onward progress of
the plant. All plants with large leaves require
much moisture, and consequently the dung that
is used for cabbages must be well wetted and the
plants immersed in water; and the planting of
them in the fields should be performed in the
wettest weather in which the work is possible to be
done. When any plants are seen to be dead, their
place must be immediately filled with a fresh plant,
in order to ensure a full crop all over the field.
h2
100 THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
So soon as any weeds appear on the land, the
scuffler or horse-hoe must enter ; and as the land
will be stiff-bottomed, the implement must be of
a weight sufficient to enable it to take and keep
a good hold of the ground, and of a strength that
will overcome the obstacles that are presented to
its action. On such soils, during the first process
of scuffling, two horses may be required, which
will best walk one in each hollow, two drills
apart, and leave an intervening hollow in which
the scuffler works. A main tree of five feet in
length will be required to stretch over two drills,
and allow the horses to walk freely. A minia-
ture plough drawn by one horse, and which
moves up and down in one hollow, and lays a
small furrow from each side of a drill, performs
the work in the most superior manner, as the
narrow point of the common share takes a better
hold of stiff-bottomed lands than any scuffler that
has yet been found. It requires double time in
finishing an interval at one round, whereas the
common scufflers finish two ; but true economy
ever consists in having all things well done,
whatever the nature or kind may be. The light
turnip drill scuffler may afterwards be used .in
making the intervals after the sides of the drills
have been cut and loosened deeply by the skele-
ton plough. The success of all green crops very
much depends on the working, and very frequent
stirring of the intervals of the drills; and the
CABBAGES.
101
drier the weather, the better — the loosening of
the earth allows the roots to spread, — encourages
evaporation, of which the moisture is imbibed by
the leaves of the plants — and the last, and not
the least benefit that is conferred, is the pulveris-
ation of the soil, for the advantage of the next
crop that is sown.
So soon as the scuffler has done a half day's
work, the hand-hoers enter to their business, by
cutting the weeds, breaking the clods, and mov-
ing the earth between the cabbage plants, by
passing the hoe cross-wise between them. A
careful hand-hoeing is equally necessary with
the efficient working of the intervals, as both
processes effect the same purpose by provoking
reciprocal combinations between the air and the
soil, for the benefit of the plants. Two or three per-
formances of the operation of scuffling and hoeing
will be sufficient for most soils, after which the
drills are earthed up by the double-mould-board
plough, moving once in the hollow, and drawn
by two horses walking asunder, at five feet or
two drill intervals. The furrow must be deep,
as deep as the plough can penetrate. Any tall
weeds that afterwards arise, must be pulled by
hand.
Cabbages form the head in autumn ; and by
the end of October the plants will have attained
the full size of the head. The outer leaves are
liable to premature decay, and fall off ; previous
102 THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
to which, they may be gathered, by pulling away
the loose leaves, which will be very useful as
food for pigs and young cattle. In November,
the stools may be pulled and stored, by separating
the stool from the root below the stock, and pull-
ing the root from the ground, shaking the earth
very carefully from the numerous radical fibres,
and carrying them to the liquid manure tank,
to reduce the very fibrous and indissoluble
structure by the action of the urinary corrosives.
The stools, after being cleaned of the outside rot-
ten leaves, are carried to the homestead, and
piled up in a dry situation in the fashion of can-
non balls, and ending in a ridge of a single stool.
The longitudinal pile is then thatched over with
straw, which is held down with ropes of the
same material. The round form of the stools
leaves many cavities in the pile for the admission
of currents of air, which materially prevents putre-
faction. Cabbages may be preserved in this way
for use throughout the winter.
Cabbages are very generally used in the early
winter, by being pulled from the field as they are
wanted for use, without storing being practised.
They are very beneficially given to milch cows,
store cattle, sheep, and pigs. They are invalua-
ble in the spring, along with beet root, for the
lambing ewes. The taste that is said to be given
to milk, by the cows eating cabbages, is most
effectually prevented, by most scrupulously re-
CABBAGES.
103
moving from the stools, when they are given to
the cattle, all blades that show the least appear-
ance of an incipient decay ; for experience has
most amply and satisfactorily shown, that the
offensive taste of the milk is communicated from
this state of the leaves.
The Brassica family of plants yield an abun-
dance of seed, and of very easy management;
but they are very liable to accidental impregna-
tion by means of bees in search of honey carrying
the impregnating pollen from one plant to
another, and thus producing an endless variety
of hybrids and kinds that are almost undistin-
guishable. The seeds are sown in August, on
warm beds of ground, well manured and pulver-
ised, where the plants remain during winter, and
are pulled for being planted in the field in the
following April and May. An over-luxuriance
in the plants, arising from a very favourable au-
tumn, may be checked by transplanting. In
countries where the autumnal preparation of the
land can be effected, the dung may be applied,
and the cabbage plants inserted into the land, in
autumn, and thus stand over winter. But the
autumnal fallowing of lands supposes both a dry
soil and a dry climate ; and it may be imagined
that the soils that are properly adapted for
cabbages, are too moist to be prepared in autumn,
and that the advance in the spring growth which
is gained by the autumnal insertion of the plants,
104
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
may induce a running to seed of the plant,
before the growth is checked by the following-
winter's cold.
The average weight of an acre of cabbages
may be stated at twenty-five tons. One pound of
drum-headed cabbages, or seven thousand grains
consist of : — nutritive matter, 430 grains ;
woody fibre, 280 grains; water, 6,290. One
hundred pounds of cabbages contain ninety
pounds of nutritive matter. Swedish turnips
are superior to cabbages in the nutritive matter
they contain, in the proportion of one hundred
and ten, to one hundred and seven and a half; and
cabbages are superior to the common white tur-
nips, in the proportion of one hundred and seven
and a half, to eighty ; and inferior to carrots, in
the proportion of one hundred and seven and a
half, to one hundred and eighty-seven. One
pound of cabbage seed will produce about twenty-
four thousand plants, and about eight thousand
plants are sufficient for an acre ; and the produce
of twenty-five tons will give three thousand four
hundred and forty pounds of nutritive matter.
Cabbages, like green crops in general, are far
too much neglected by the farmer. But great as
the advantages of a cabbage crop confessedly are,
the cultivation of the plant is confined to a much
more limited range than that of turnips ; it must
have a humid climate, a deep rich moist soil, and
a very ample allowance of good farm-yard dung.
CABBAGES.
105
It may be said that all green crop plants require
these conditions: very true — but cabbages re-
quire them in the superlative degree ; and conse-
quently tire range of their utility becomes more
contracted. But on all deep clayey loams, that
enjoy a humid climate, there is not a more pro-
fitable crop than cabbages, in yielding a weight
of produce per acre, and in the useful purposes to
which that produce can be applied. The com-
parison in point of utility comes to lie between
cabbages and the Swedish turnip, as both plants
are raised on similar soils. Taking the expense
of cultivating the two plants to be in all points
equal, the superiority is usually granted to the
Swedish turnip, as it is more nutritive, and can
be managed and stored with less trouble; and,
from withstanding better the severity of winter,
it can be used in a fresher state. The turnip is
better calculated to yield fat and muscular fibre
in animals, and cabbages to afford milk and
the juicy fluids: they are also more laxative ; and
from whatever cause these qualities may arise,
experience shows that the fact is certain. Hence
the great value of cabbages for being given to
milch cows and to lambing ewes; and the stools
are best given whole and uncut, as the animal
has a beneficial pleasure in biting the lump, and
in exercising its jaws, which engenders a quan-
tity of saliva, very useful in promoting the diges-
tion of the food, and for the secretion of the
106
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
nutritious juices. The best use of cabbages may be
in being consumed in the early winter, from Oc-
tober to January, and being thus used fresh
daily from the field, the mustiness will be avoided
that is always found to adhere to a large body of
succulent matters in confinement. But a portion
of the stools may be preserved for spring use, in
feeding the lambing ewes, the great value of the
juicy food that is yielded to the animals being
more than equal to the distasteful mouldiness that
has formed matter of complaint against the stor-
ing of cabbages. But if even the one-half of
the cabbages can be preserved in a fresh and
succulent state, the benefit will be almost incal-
culable, in having a quantity of juicy food at that
most critical season of the year, and the most
precarious time to the animal. On the whole, if
Swedish turnips are generally preferred, cabbages
must not be rejected: the plant yields to none in
value and utility, when used under the necessary
circumstances of soil and climate, and the means
of a profitable consumption.
The Turnip-rooted Cabbage, or the Hunga-
rian Turnip, is a variety of the genus Brassica, or
the cabbage plant. The seeds are sown on bor-
der grounds, where the plants stand over winter,
and are planted in the fields in the months of
April and May, and receive the same treatment
as cabbages in every respect. As the plant pro-
gresses in growth, the stem enlarges into a bulb
CABBAGES.
107
immediately above the ground, which grows to
a very considerable size, and is provided with
several protuberances, like warts or tubercles, on
the upper part of the bulb, from which the shoots
proceed. The bulb is very hard in composition,
and is capable of resisting the severest rigour of
any winter; but the very fibrous and stringy
texture renders it very little useful to the farmer,
as it is constantly refused by animals. In the
spring, when drought reaches to almost any se-
clusion, and when some degree of exposure is
inevitable, in the act of giving green vegetable
food to animals, the juice is very speedily eva-
porated, and the slices, and even the bulb itself
are so much exsiccated, that the remains are no-
thing more than a quantity of dry fibres joined
together, and unpalatable to any animal what-
ever. One pound of the bulb contains 400
grains of nutritive matter, 320 grains of woody
fibre, and 6,280 grains of water. An acre of 14
tons will give 1,881 lbs. of nutritive matter.
Here the quantity of woody fibre is greater than
in the common cabbage, but not in such a great
degree as the vast difference in the nutritious
quality of the two esculents would seem to
indicate. Neither docs the difference in the
quantity of nutritive matter, 430 and 400 grs. in
one pound of the article, at all account for the
very wide difference in the value, which practical
experience has so fully established. In addition
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
to the quality of constituent parts in any article,
which are shown by the results of the chemical
analysis, there must be some unknown agency
exerted from the combination of the elements,
and which must be allowed to account for the
apparently wide discrepancies that are seen to
exist between the investigations of science and
the results of practice.
The Green Savoy, or Scotch Kale, is ano-
ther permanent variety of the common cabbage,
with a strong stem, crowned by a large open head
of oblong, roundish, broad, thick, cut, curly
leaves, but not cabbaging, or forming a head.
The cultivation of this plant is exactly the same
as that of cabbages, with the difference of being
thicker planted on the drills, as it requires less
room, on account of forming no globular head,
and the seeds being sown in the spring, for
raising plants to go to the field in June. " This
property of the plant forming no head, but the
leaves remaining open and exposed, very much
diminishes the value of this esculent, when com-
pared with cabbages and turnips. The leaves
are quickly affected by frosts, and are prone to
decay. But no plant that is known to us is more
agreeable to animal taste ; and from the beginning
of October to the beginning of January, or be-
fore the frosts commence, the plant will be found
of very great service in the feeding of milch cows,
young cattle, and sheep. The want of bulbs
RAPE AND COLE.
109
renders it ineligible to be kept for -winter use,
as leaves cannot be stored or kept in any way.
One pound of green curled kale gave 440 grains
of nutritive matter, 880 of woody fibre, and
5,680 of water. Here, the quantity of woody
fibre is greater than in the same quantity of the
Turnip-rooted Cabbage — but the value of the
two plants lies on the opposite side, even if
the comparison be made in the early winter, when
the plants are in the most succulent state. 1
3. Eape and Cole.
Eape and Cole form a species of the genus
Brassica, — of which the difference is barely per-
ceptible. Root, caulescent, fusiform and biennial.
Stem, somewhat branched, smooth, cylindrical,
from one foot to two feet in height. Root-leaves,
lyrate, almost smooth, divided into deeply-
pinnate lobes, which are again irregularly in-
dented or serrated on the edges. Stem-leaves,
smooth, glaucous, sessile, and an oblong, heart-
shaped figure, very slightly toothed on the
edges. Calyx, yellowish green, spreading as in
the Sinapis, or Wild Mustard. The leaves do
not cabbage together, or form a head.
This plant is cultivated in the same way as
Turnips; and as it forms no bulb at top or root,
to be preserved during winter, it is always con-
sumed on the ground by sheep. It is also sown
110 THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
in the spring in broad-cast, and eaten on the
ground which is sown with wheat; and also on
lands from which winter vetches have been raised.
It is mostly used in growing great quantities of
seed, from which rape-oil is extracted, and the
dry residuum is called rape-cake, which is a good
manure, and a middling food for cattle, being
about one-half the value of linseed cake. A crop
of rape, as the plant forms no bulb, is about a
quarter the value of turnips.
4. Beet.
The word Beet is derived from the Latin word
Beta, a name given by botanists to a plant which
has a resemblance, when it is swelled with seed,
to the form of the Greek letter Beta, thus /3.
The plant is a genus of the class and order,
Pentandria Digynia, of Linnaeus, and of the
natural order, Chenopodece, of Jussieu.
Gen. Character : — Calyx, perianth five-
leaved, concave, permanent; divisions ovate,
oblong, obtuse. Corolla, none. Stamina, fila-
ments five, subulate, opposite to the leaves of
the calyx, and of the same length with them.
Anthers, roundish. Pistil, germen in a
manner below the receptacle. Styles, two, very
short, erect. Stigmas, acute. Perianth, capsule
within the bottom of the calyx, one-celled, deci-
BEET.
Ill
duous. Seed, single, kidney-form, compressed,
involved in the calyx.
Essential Character : — Calyx, five-leaved.
Corolla, none. Seed, kidney-form, within the
substance of the base of the calyx.
This plant is divided into four varieties.
1. Beta Vulgaris, or the Red Garden Beet. —
2. Beta Cicla, Sicla, or rather Sicula, or the
White Garden Beet. — 3. Beta Maritima, or
the Sea Beet. — 4. Beta Patula, or the
Spreading Beet. A large variety of the Beta
Sicula, or the Sicilian Beet, has been lately
introduced from abroad, under the name of
Mangel-Wurzel, -which in German, means, Scar-
city '-root; and by a very strange translation, it is
called in French, racine d' abondance, or the root
of plenty, as well as racine de disette, or the root
of scarcity. The name of Field Beet, is more
appropriate.
Beet has been long known in Germany, whence
it was introduced into England, at the latter end
of the last century, chiefly by the recommendation
and example of Dr. Lettsom, a medical gentleman
of great reputation, and one of the Society of
Friends. The best improved variety .has a red
skin, and when cut through, it appears veined
with red, in concentric circles. The White Beets,
of a smaller size, are preferred for the extraction
of sugar from the juice, as they are found to con-
112
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
tain a greater proportional quantity of that
substance. Mangel- Wurzel has a large, long,
reddish, or sometimes whitish red root, — and
very large, oblong, thick, succulent, leaves. The
taste is nsipid and unpalatable; but the leaves
being large and succulent, are good to use occa-
sionally, in the manner of common beet; and par-
ticularly to boil like spinach, or put into soups, —
and the stalks and midrib of the leaf to be stewed
and eaten as asparagus. Dr. Lettsom has writ-
ten, that he grew roots of the average weight of
ten pounds; and if the leaves be calculated at
half that weight, there would be fifteen pounds
of nutritious aliment on every square eighteen
inches of ground.
In Britain, beet-root is planted on land that
has been fallowed, drilled, and dunged, as for
turnips and cabbages; and the seeds are inserted
on the drills at the distance of six inches, in holes
made by the hand-dibble, at the rate of 4 lbs. to an
acre. Of late years, the seeds have been deposited
by a drill-machine, provided with a cylinder and
cups, being previously steeped for forty-eight
hours in urinary water, suds, or lees, and dried
with quick lime, to suit the purpose of being-
sown. In both ways of planting, the drills must
be rolled without delay. The quantity of lime
that adheres to the moistened seeds has been
proved to give a superiority to the crop, arising
from the speedy decomposition of the albumei
BEET.
113
which the seed contains, and which is so bene-
ficially converted into food for the young germin-
ation. And when a plant acquires a superiority
at this stage of growth, it never loses it during
the season.
So soon as weeds appear on the land, the
intervals of the drills must be horse-hoed and
scuffled, as described in the cultivation of cab-
bages, and performed with the same implements;
for the two plants are suitable for similar soils,
or what are called the stiffer green-crop soils.
At the same time, the plants on the drills are
thinned to the distance of twelve to eighteen
inches from each other. The sides of the drills
and the intervals between the plants must be
moved by the hoe, and well broken and pulver-
ised. The horse-hoeing of the intervals must be
frequently performed during summer, in order to
encourage the growth of the plant, by pulverisa-
tion and exhalation. Two or three hand-hoeings
will also be required. Any tall weeds that may
arise during the latter part of the summer, must
be pulled by hand, and no weed must be allowed
to grow. Earthing up of the drills, by the
double-mould-board plough, is not approved; as
the earth laid against the sides of the plants,
encourages the growth of lateral fibres, which in
every case impart a bitterness and a coarseness to
all plants that nature has provided with a tap-
root. The upright tapering plant, standing from
I
114
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
twelve to eighteen inches above ground, with
one root projecting downwards, is always found
to be the soundest, the most palatable, and the
most nutritious.
In autumn, the outer leaves of the beet-root
plant begin to droop, and to show symptoms of
decay. Some persons recommend that these
leaves be gathered, by being stripped from the
plant, and given to young cattle or sheep, while
others assert, that the future growth of the plant
is hurt by the leaves being pulled, as they per-
form a functional part in the process of growth.
But it may be very reasonably supposed, that
leaves which are in decay, and which are nearly
parted from the stem, have ceased to perform any
office, and that the removal of them cannot be
hurtful; and this observation has often been con-
firmed by practice. In the end of October, the
crop is removed from the field, by being pulled
by hand, the earth and roots neatly cut away,
and the plants carried to the homestead, where
they are built into a pile of about six feet in
width at bottom, and about four in height,
tapering into a narrow ridge at top, with the
the thick end of the plant outwards, on the sides
of the pile. The pile is generally covered with
earth, about one foot in thickness, with a thin
covering of straw next to the plants. But a
covering of straw in the form of thatch, may be
preferable, as it will admit air, to prevent the
BEET.
115
sweating of the roots; and severe frosts may be
met with a covering, timely applied, of fresh
stable dung in the strawy state.
In this way, beet-roots may be kept in a very
fresh state till May and June in the year after
they are grown. The tops and leaves are given
to young cattle and sheep; but cautiously to
cattle, as they are apt to distend the animals, from
the quantity of the gaseous fluids which they
contain.
Beet-roots, either in a raw or steamed state,
are very beneficially given to milch cows through-
out the winter, and are found to increase the
quantity of milk very much; but the milk is
thought to be thin and more watery in quality.
In a raw state, there is no better food for store
pigs and young cattle. In the feeding of cattle,
opinions differ about the value of beet-root when
compared with Swedish turnips : the most gene-
ral opinion prefers the latter, and the experiments
made by feeding animals of equal age and of the
same breed on the two different roots, have
proved altogether inconclusive, because no two
animals, of any age or breed, can be found to
increase in equal weight in the same time from
a given quantity of the same food. Beet-root is
equally grateful to sheep; and in the spring
months of the lambing season, the greater juiciness
of the root places it above any other plant in
point of utility ; and in that respect, and at that
I 2
116
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
season of the year, it is most assuredly superior
to the Swedish turnip, where milking and not
fattening is required. And the preserving of the
roots in a fresh state till March and April, is a
matter of no difficulty.
Beet-root yields a greater weight per acre,
both in roots and leaves, than any other green
crop yet known, and must be placed at the head
of the cultivated plants. Probably, from a long
cultivation, and a gradually extended exposure,
the plant may become acclimated, and withstand
the severity of winter as well as turnips. This
result might be tried for, by planting the roots
of the strongest and most vigorous appearance,
and by preserving the seed for future propagation,
of those plants that escaped destruction during
winter, and bore seed the next summer. By
persevering in this way for a period of years, it
is very probable that the persistent quality might
be conferred. Beet-root contains 150 parts in
1000 of nutritive matter; is inferior to potatoes
in the ratio of 150 to 200: it is superior to
turnips and carrots, and inferior to cabbages.
An acre of twenty-five tons of green food will
yield 3120 lbs. of nutritive matter, and 100 lbs.
of the roots contain 16 jibs, of nutritive matter.
Einhof states that eighteen tons of mangel
wurzel are equal to fifteen tons of ruta baga, or
seven and a half tons of potatoes, or three and
three-quarter tons of good meadow hay, each
BEET.
117
quantity containing the same nourishment; but
then the above quantity of roots can be grown
on less than an acre, whereas it will take about
three acres of meadow land to produce the equi-
valent quantity of hay ; and of all the root crops,
the least exhausting for the land is beet.
It was early observed, that beet-root was a
plant of a very saccharine nature, and that a
crystallisable sugar was easily obtainable from
the juice of the roots. The manufacture of beet-
root sugar sprung up in France, under the super-
intendence of Chaptal, the eminent chemist, in
consequence of the decrees which were issued to
exclude the colonial produce of Britain. When
the sugar is refined, it cannot be distinguished
from the cane-sugar, either in taste or appear-
ance. Five tons of clean roots produce about
four and a half cwt. of coarse sugar, which give
about 160 lbs. of double-refined sugar, and 60 lbs.
of inferior lump-sugar. The rest is molasses,
from which a good spirit is distilled. By dis-
tilling the juice of beet-root, after it Iras under-
gone the vinous fermentation, a very good spirit
is obtained, and also a kind of beer, which is said
to be pleasant and wholesome in warm weather.
Professor Lampadius obtained from 110 lbs. of
roots, four lbs. of well grained white powder
sugar; and the residue afforded seven pints of
spirit. Achard says, that about one ton of roots
produced 100 lbs of raw sugar, which gave 55 lbs.
118 THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
of refined sugar, and 25 lbs. of treacle. This
result is not very different from that of Chaptal
in France.
Another variety of beet has been lately intro-
duced, called " Turnip-rooted," or " Orange
Beet." There has not yet appeared to be any
difference in the quantity or quality of this
variety that is deserving of notice.
5. Carrots.
The word Carrot is derived from the Greek
KapcoTos, Pastinaca tenuifolia, or " Slender-
leaved Parsnip," so called in Greek, because it
was thought to give to the eaters of it a carum,
or pleasant relish; or from /capvcov, from the
sweetness of the taste. The plant is the Daucus
of botanists, from the Greek word Aavicos, a
certain plant of Crete, mentioned by Dioscorides
and Hippocrates; but evidently confounded by
these writers and by Theophrastus with the
Athamanta, the Cretan Spignel, or the Candy
Carrot, which grows abundantly in that island,
and of which a species is found on Gog-Magog
Hills in Cambridgeshire. The carrot belongs to
the class and order Pentandria Digynia of Linnaeus,
and to the natural order Umbelliferce, or Um-
bellmat.
Generic Character: — Umbel, compound
— concave when in fruit. Involucrum, of several
CARROTS.
119
pinnatifid leaves. Calyx, superior, obsolete.
Corolla, petals, five, inversely heart-shaped, in-
flexed, the outer ones large and radiant. Sta-
mina, filaments, five, capillary, spreading. An-
thers, roundish. Pistillum, germen inferior,
small, elliptical, compressed, rough. Styles, two,
reflexed. Stigmas, blunt. Peria, none. Fruit,
ovate, hispid. Seeds, two, elliptic, oblong.
Central flower of each umbel abortive.
Essential Character : — Involucrum, pin-
natifid. Corolla, somewhat radiant. Fruit, mu-
ricated. Central Flowers, abortive.
The Daucus Carota, or the Common Carrot, is
biennial, and flowers from June to August. It
grows very common on pastures, banks, and
head-lands. The umbel is at first a little convex,
but becomes gradually flat, and then as the
flowers are going off, more and more concave,
till it forms a perfect basin, in its seeding state,
resembling a bird's nest. From this circumstance
it has received the name of bird's nest, or bee's
nest. In the wild state, the root of the carrot is
hard, slender, fusiform, and whitish or brownish
in colour. Stem, upright, grooved, hispid, two
feet high, with alternate branches, which are long,
commonly from six to seven, to nine or ten
inches, have one leaf on them, except the primary
or terminating one, which is naked, and have a
single umbel of flowers at top ; bottom and prin-
120 THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
cipal leaves, sheathing tri-pinnate, the last
pinnule toothed, and terminated by spinules, the
nerves hispid — the flowers are white, those in
the middle sometimes tinged with purple ; these
are fertile, but those in the circumference which
are irregular, and larger than the others, are
frequently either neutral, or have pistils only.
The fruit is spheroidal, composed of two plano-
convex seeds, on the back of which are four
membranaceous narrow crests, pectinated with
linear, setaceous, innocuous, flexible, teeth; and
between these, three raised nerves, having very
minute prickles on them, along each side, bowing
outwards; the belly is flat, or slightly concave,
marked with obscure, longitudinal streaks.
Carrot seeds have been recommended as a
powerful diuretic; and an infusion of them has
been found to give relief in fits of the gravel and
stone. The roots are good bait for catching
moles, and for destroying crickets, when made
into • a paste with wheat meal, and powdered
arsenic ; and are also used for poultices to mitigate
the pain, and abate the stench, of foul and can-
cerous ulcers. When grated fine, or boiled and
mashed to a pulp, and applied without the inter-
vention of lint, the poultice has a truly surprising
effect in abating the intolerable pain, and in cor-
recting the shocking foetor that attends these
dreadful disorders. A very good spirit may be
distilled from carrots; and the refuse will be
CARROTS .
121
excellent for feeding swine. Carrots were
introduced into England from Flanders, about
the year 1600.
Carrots delight to grow in deep, warm, light
loams, with a dry and porous subsoil, which
must be prepared by fallowing and cleaning, as
for any other green crop, and is best done in
autumn, after the removal of a corn crop. The
land should be so rich by previous cultivation as
to produce a crop of carrots, without the appli-
cation of manure with the carrot seed, as the
contact of fresh dung never fails to encourage a
large growth of lateral fibres, and a profusion of
leaves, which very much deteriorate the value of
the root. When dung is applied, it should be well
rotted, and short. The seeds must be steeped in
water and saltpetre, six quarts to one pound, and
then spread on a floor till the sprout appears, and
then sown ; or they may be encrusted with quick
lime, when taken from the steep. The land
being wrought and harrowed fine, carrots are best
sown by a machine, with lengthened coulters,
which make ruts in the ground for receiving the
seed. The plant is not of very quick growth,
and therefore requires early sowing, in March
and April, at the rate of two or three pounds to
an acre. As the plant grows upright, and does
not require much lateral room, the drills may be
about eighteen inches wide, which will admit a
light scarifier to horse-hoe the intervals. When
122
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
the plants are about three inches high, they are
thinned out by hand to the distance of six inches
from each other. The horse and hand-hoeing
must be repeated till no weeds appear.
Carrots are not easily hurt by frost. They are
generally raised from the field in November, and
housed or pitted, some persons using sand and
saw-pit dust to lay the roots in the heaps,
thatched with straw like beet. The tops are cut
off by hand-sickle, and the extreme tap-root and
the earth are carefully removed, after being raised
from the ground by pronged forks. The tops are
very much relished by pigs, and the roots in a
raw state by horses, and also by cattle — and a
very profitable use consists in steaming the roots
for fattening hogs, and then mashing and mixing
them with meal. Sheep also thrive well on
sliced carrots.
Carrots are a very nutritious plant, containing
98 parts in 1000 of soluble matter; they are
more nutritive than cabbages in the proportion of
187 to 1074, and superior to Swedish turnips
in the ratio of 187 to 110:— 64 drams afforded
187 grains of nutritive matter, 100 grains of
which consist of 95 of sugar, mucilage 3, and
extract 2. The white variety contains 98
of sugar, mucilage 1, and extract 1.
An acre of carrots will yield about 10 to 16
tons in weight, and 2640lbs of nutritive matter,
— the White Belgian variety, lately introduced,
PARSNIPS.
123
■will give much more, the tops and the roots of it
being much larger than in the Attingham and
Orange varieties, the two kinds that are generally-
used. But a greater bulk usually induces a
coarseness in all organised bodies.
6. Paesnips.
The origin of the word Parsnip is not very
clearly defined — the last syllable is referred to
the Saxon word " nepe, " which occurs also in
turnip. It is often written Pastnip, and the
derivation referred to Pascendo, in Latin, from
animals eating it so eagerly. The plant is the
Pastinaca of botanists, which word is derived
from the Latin verb, Pasco, to feed, or from
Pasties, a pasture, on account of the nourishing
qualities of the roots. Linnaeus rather considered
the name to be derived from Pastinum, a forked
tool, used in digging or planting vineyards, which
the root of the Pastinaca resembles. It belongs
to the class and order, Pentandria Digynia, of
Linnaeus, and to the natural order, Umbellifera,
of Jussieu.
Geneeal Character:— General umbel, of
many rays, flat; the partial umbel of many rays.
Generalinvolucrum, none. Partial, none. Perianth
obsolete. Corolla, the universal one, uniform,—
124
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
Flowers, all fertile, partial corolla, of five
lanceolate, involute, undivided petals. Stamina,
filaments, five, capillary. Anthers, roundish.
Pistillum, germen, inferior. Styles, two, reflexed
stigmas, obtuse. Pericarp, fruit much compressed,
elliptical, divisible into two parts. Seeds, two,
elliptical, girt round the margin, nearly flat o n
both sides.
Essential Character : — Fruit, elliptical,
compressed, almost flat. Petals, involute, entire.
Involucrum, neither general nor partial.
There are three species of the Parsnip. —
1 . Pastinaca Lucida, or the Shining-leaved Parsnip
— 2. Pastinaca Sativa or the Common Parsnip.
— 3. Pastinaca Opopanax, or the Kough Parsnip.
The Common Parsnip has two varieties; Pasti-
naca, Sylvestris, or the Wild Parsnip; Pastinaca
Sativa, or the Garden Parsnip.
Our description is limited to Pastinaca Sativa
or the Common Parsnip. The plant is a native
of South Britain, and of the south of Europe, on
hills, and in the borders of fields, on a calcareous
soil. It flowers in July. Root, biennial, spindle-
shaped, aromatic, sweet, but acrid. Stem, three
feet high, erect, branched, angulated, furrowed,
roughish. Leaves, pinnate ; leaflets, from five to
nine, cut, or serrated, the terminal one, three-
lobed. Flowers, small, yellow, in terminal, soli-
tary, erect, roughish umbels of many rays.
PARSNIPS.
125
Fruit, large, elliptical, flat, ribbed, smooth, and
-when ripe, light brown in colour.
The highly saccharine juice of parsnips is
found to render it very nutritious for various
kinds of animals. The roots are sweeter than
carrots, and are brewed (instead of malt) with
hops, and fermented with yeast. The liquor is
very agreeable in taste. Parsnips contain, in
1000 parts, 99 of soluble matter.
Parsnips require for their profitable growth, a
rich, deep, sandy loam, which may be very
much fitted for their use, and for that of all tap-
rooted plants, by the act of sub-soil ploughing
the land and deepening the staple. Parsnips are
sown in March in the same way as carrots ; and
the after-culture of the root is exactly the
same. The roots are also stored in the same
manner for winter use. It has been recom-
mended to raise the plants of parsnips like cab-
bages, the previous summer, and to transplant
them in the field in the spring. The plants are
not easily hurt by frost.
Pigs are very fond of parsnips, which make
their flesh very white. Milch-cows fed with them
give much milk, and yield a butter that is very
well-flavoured. For horses, the use of parsnips
seems not to be recommended. The tops of the
plant are good litter for the yard of the store
pigs, that pick and eat what part they please.
The best use of the roots is, in being given to
126
THE ESCULENT PLANTS.
store pigs in a raw state, or steamed, and
mashed with meal and given to the feed-
ing hogs in troughs. When the roots are boiled,
the liquor may be mixed and thickened with
meal, and will form a very good food for swine.
The steamed roots of parsnips are very grateful
to milch cows, when mixed with chaff, and
steamed together in the vats, whereby the chaff
is impregnated with the volatile juices of the
root which are expelled by the heat, and would
otherwise be lost.
The case of carrots and parsnips shows how
very little reliance can be placed on the nutritive
qualities of plants as shown by chemical analysis,
in reference to the practical use. The two plants
now mentioned, are at the head of nutritious
esculents — yet the use in practice is at the
bottom of the list. The cultivation is more
troublesome and expensive, and the storing of
the roots, and the preparation of them for use,
add very considerably to the cost. Parsnips are
best when steamed, and carrots in a raw state.
Turnips are best when raw, but the case of
potatoes is yet undecided. In all cases of a raw
state of an esculent root, or of preparation by
steaming, or boiling, very much, if not all,
depends on the organic constitution of the
animal which consumes the substance. The
peculiar and invaluable property of the turnip,
consists, in the ease of cultivation, and in its
POTATO.
127
being best adapted for the use of every animal of
the farm in a raw, or unprepared state, whereby
the cost of preparation is avoided. And though
such a plant as the turnip, that contains about
90 per cent, of water, never would be recom-
mended a priori as a nutritive substance, yet,
practice and experience, against which there is
no arguing, have most amply and satisfactorily
established the fact, that for general utility in
the keeping and feeding of animals, the turnip
has no equal when all circumstances are con-
sidered.
IV. THE TUBEROUS PLANTS.
1. Potato.
All etymologists agree in deriving the word
Potato from the South American word Battatas,
which was corrupted by the Spaniards into
Patata, and by the Italians into Patato. The
English spelling of the word alters it by changing
one letter only.
The Potato Plant is a South American species
of the genus Solanum of botanists, which word
128 THE TUBEROUS PLANTS.
has been referred to the Latin noun Solamen, in
allusion to the comforting quality of the odible
roots, comprising the potato, tomato, and the egg
plant. This might, indeed, apply to the Potato,
if those who gave it that name, could possibly
have had it in contemplation. Another deriva-
tion, a sole, from the sun, carries no more con-
viction along with it than the first ; nor can we
for a moment admit the true orthography to be
Sulanum, from Sus, because the plant is useful to
swine. The word Solanum must be left among
the few ancient names, whose source cannot be
traced.
The Solanum belongs to the class and order,
Pentandria Monogynia of Linnaeus, and to the
natural order, Solanea; of Jussieu.
The Generic Character : — Calyx, peri-
anthium one-leaved, half five-cleft, erect, acute,
permanent. Corolla, one-petalled, wheel-shaped;
tube very short; border large, half five-cleft;
form reflex, flat, plaited. Stamina, filaments
five, awl-shaped, very small. Anthers, oblong,
converging, sub-coalesccnt, opening at the top
by two pores. Pistillum, gcrmcn roundish.
Style, filiform, longer than the stamens. Stigma,
blunt. Pericarpium, roundish, smooth, dotted at
the top, two-celled, with a convex fleshy recep-
tacle on each side. Seeds, very many, roundish,
nestling.
POTATO.
129
Essential Character : — Corolla, wheel-
shaped. Anthers, sub-coalescent, opening at the
top. Berry, two-celled, superior.
The Solarium is a very extensive genus, com-
prising the various kinds of night-shade, and
other deadly plants, along with many esculents,
as the potato, the tomato, and the egg plant.
Notwithstanding the rude and irregular habit of
the genus, the flowers are often so handsome as
to attract much notice, and the fruit is, in some
cases, very striking and ornamental. The stem
is branched, herbaceous, or shrubby, smooth,
hairy, or prickly. Leaves, alternate, simple, or
compound, lobed, cut, or entire; sometimes
prickly. Inflorescence, often lateral, and extra-
axillary. Corolla, blue, purple, white, or yellow.
Fruit, yellow, or red, rarely black, or white.
The herbage is foetid, narcotic, and dangerous.
Flowers, without scent. Fruit, often very nau-
seous, and in no instance eatable without
dressing.
The species are disposed in three sections:
— 1. Unarmed; containing twenty species, and
among them, the common potato, and the night-
shades. — 2. Prickly; containing thirty- eight
foreign species, but none British. — 3. Branches
ending in thorns, containing one species, or the
Solanum lycioides, or the Boxthorn Night-shade,
supposed to be a native of Peru, and forming a
K
130 THE TUBEROUS PLANTS.
stove-plant in England, flowering in May and
June. Besides the plants above enumerated, it
is supposed that many yet remain unsettled, of
which we have only got imperfect, or uncertain
specimens. Mr. Brown defines fourteen new
species from New Holland; and the tropical
regions of Africa, probably, may possess many
more.
The Potato is the Solarium tuberosum of
botanists, so called, from forming tubers at the
root. Stem, herbaceous; leaves, pinnate, quite
entire; peduncles, sub-divided. Stem, from two
to three feet in height, succulent, somewhat
angular, striated, slightly hairy, frequently
spotted with red, branched; the branches
long and weak. Leaves, interruptedly pinnate,
having three or four pairs of leaflets, with
smaller ones between, and one at the end larger
than the rest; the leaflets are somewhat hairy,
and dark green on the upper surface. The
flowers are either white, or tinged with purple;
or, as old Gerarde describes them, of a light
purple, striped down the middle of every fold,
or welt, with a fight show of yellowness. The
fruit is a round berry, the size of a small plum,
green at first, but black when ripe, and contain-
ing many small, flat, roundish, white seeds. A
native in Quito, in South America.
The history of the Potato, and of its introduc-
tion into Europe, is involved in some obscurity,
POTATO.
131
but the most common opinion ascribes tbe first
general notice of the plant to the illustrious but
ill-fated Sir Walter Ealeigh, who, on his return
home from America in the year 1623, stopping
in Ireland, distributed a number of the potato
roots in that kingdom. There they multiplied
rapidly. But it may be surmised, that it was
known before that time, as Gerarde, in his
" History of Plants," written in 1597, speaks of
two kinds, the " Common and the Virginian,"
which he cultivated in his garden. Be this as it
may, no man need wish for a stronger claim to
immortality than the individual has raised for
himself, who found, and brought the potato from
distant shores — for in so doing, he conferred a
greater gift on mankind than kings and princes
can bestow.
The varieties of the potato plant are very nu-
merous, and have arisen from casual and intended
impregnation, aided by the natural influences of
soil and climate.
The two great divisions, are the colours of red
and white: and though no very particular qua-
lity attaches to any shape or colour of the root,
yet there is generally some peculiar modification
of it in the form or taste, that renders one variety
preferable to another. Thus, the oblong, or the
kidney-shaped varieties, are more mealy than
the round-shaped roots, in the early part of the
season, but less so as the season advances — and
x 2
132 THE TUBEROUS PLANTS.
tliey are generally less productive, and require
the superior soils. The round varieties are the
most productive and most vigorous in the stem,
but are more watery in their composition, and
less agreeable to the taste, than the kidney^
shaped varieties. There arc many modifications
in each variety; but, in general, the above ob-
servation holds good.
The potato is propagated by using the tubers
in cuts or slices, each cut containing an eye or
bud root, whence the germination proceeds. As
the set or cut has to support the germination,
until the roots are grown to draw nourishment
from the earth, it should not be very small, but
contain a fair portion of the tuber to be used in
decomposition. A common-sized potato will
form four useful sets. The tubers are attached
to the stem root of the plant, or to each other,
by a strong radicle ; and at the end that is oppo-
site to this radicle, the eyes, or bud roots are
placed. The potato should, therefore, be cut
into slices longitudinally, in order to give to each
eye a fair share of the body of the tuber. The
scooping out of the eyes to be used for sets, failed,
as the infant nourishment was wanting — and the
planting of the tubers, whole, or uncut, has not
been attended with any advantages above the
mode of slicing the potato into strong sets.
Potatoes like a strong deep warm loam, with
a dry porous subsoil — a soil not adhesive to a
POTATO.
133
viscous clamminess, nor open to an unconnected
pulverulence. It must possess stiffness, rather
openness, and be moist rather than dry. The
land is ploughed, wrought, and cleaned, as is
done for turnips and other green crops : the farm-
yard dung is used in a fresh half-rotten state
from the yards, or from a heap laid together
without being turned over. By the first week in
May, the land will be ready, and must be drilled
into ridges of thirty inches apart, by the common
plough, in the way described in the article
Turnips. The dung is brought forward, pulled
from the carts into heaps in the drills, and spread
immediately. Potatoes being juicy plants, re-
quire the dung to be in a very moist state; and it
is better when the planting of the roots can be
done with the land in a moist state, and the wea-
ther also damp, but not sufficiently wet to render
the soil clammy and adhesive. The potato sets,
fresh-cut, are brought to the fields in bags, and
are deposited in the hollows of the drills without
delay, at the distance of eight to twelve inches,
by persons carrying the sets in baskets, and who
walk in the hollows of the drills, and place
the weight of their foot on each set as it
is placed on the ground, in order to place it
firmly in its position. Two or three ploughs
follow closely on the process of planting the sets,
and cover the dung by splitting and reversing the
drills, the plough being provided with a main
134 THE TDBEEOUS PLANTS.
tree of five feet in length, which, by stretching
over two drills, enables the horses to walk widely
apart, the near side animal always walking on the
top of the left side drill, which prevents any
jostling of the sets in the hollows of the drill by
the feet of the animal. The drills should be
deeply made, and very deeply reversed, in order
to throw a heavy covering of fresh earth over the
dung and the sets. The drills may then be rolled
with the farm light roll of six cwt.
So soon as weeds are seen, and the braids of
the young plant have fully appeared, the hollows
of the drills must be cut and scarified deeply
and repeatedly, by the skeleton plough and the
light scuffler; the hand-hoeing following, and in-
tervening between each scuffling process, breaking
every clod and completely pulverising the soil
between and along the sides of the young sets.
Both the tops and the intervals of the drills
must present an entire mass of finely broken and
comminuted earth, in which not one single weed
can be seen: and this result is to be obtained
by the continual action of the horse and hand-
hoe. In the end of July, when the growth of
weeds has been extinguished, and the stem and
leaves of the plants have become large and over-
shadowing, the drills must be earthed up, by a
double-mould-board plough, drawn by two horses,
moving in one hollow, and one horse on each
side in the adjoining hollow, a main tree of five
POTATO.
135
feet in length stretching over two drills as before.
The plough must move deeply, and throw up as
much earth as possible to the roots of the plants.
In about fourteen days after the first earthing up,
when the earth will have again crumbled down
into the hollows, the process must be again re-
peated, as before described. This last earthing up
of the drills is often attended with very signal
benefits to the potato plants. The plucking
away the blossoms of potatoes, in order to increase
the quantity of tubers at the root, has been often
tried, and has as often failed.
The decay of the haulm or stem of the potato
plants, and the ripening of the berries, are the
signs of maturity, which generally happens in
October in the British Isles. The crop of roots
is then raised. The stems are pulled by hand;
the tubers and the earth are carefully shaken off;
and the haulm is then carried to the farmery, to
be laid in the bottom of the feeding yards, or
laid on a compost heap, or thrown in the liquid
manure tank. The stems are slow of decompo-
sition. "When the tubers are raised by forks,
the stems are thrown into heaps on the field,
after being divested of the earth and roots, and
are afterwards carted away at convenience. It
has become very common to raise the crop by
means of the common plough, which lays over
the drill by one furrow. The furrow slice re-
quires to be moved and searched by hand forks.
THE TUBEROUS PLANTS.
It may be stated from experience, that the raising
of potatoes by means of three pronged hand forks
is the preferable mode, where one person to each
drill raises the roots, and another person gathers
the roots into a basket, and deposits them in carts
that are stationed on the field, and which are re-
gularly drawn home and emptied, and returned to
the field. The land is more pulverised by the
forks than by ploughing up the roots, and the
tubers are got with more certainty. In either
way of gathering the roots, a double tine of har-
rowing is useful, in dragging to light any root
that has escaped observation in digging. The
tubers must be carried in a dry state, to a dry
ground at the homestead, and there piled up in
a longitudinal heap, about six feet wide at bottom
and four feet high, and covered with a thatching
of straw or turf, and with earth to the thickness of
one foot. If frosts uncommonly severe should
occur, the danger of damage may be easily
averted, by covering the potato piles with rough
strawy dung from the stable yard. There is no
better preventive of frost. In this way, potatoes
may be kept quite fresh and wholesome till the
month of May, following the year of production.
The list of cultivated plants does not com-
prehend any one that is nearly so useful as the
potato. From the tables of princes and peers
down to the dinner of the humblest labourer, the
potato holds a place; and for the use of animals,
POTATO.
137
no one plant can be compared to it. For human
food, the use of the root is well known. For
horses, it is equally useful in a raw, or in a
steamed state; for cattle, the raw state is prefer-
able; for sheep, the roots do not seem eligible;
for swine, the best conducted experiments have
shown, that the cooked state of the roots is pre-
ferable for the feeding of bacon, though the raw
state may be equally beneficial for store pigs.
When steamed and mashed, and mixed with
meal, the roots are very excellent food for
poultry, when given to them in troughs. And
the last use, and not the least in the estimation
of some persons, is, that in a half-rotted state
from the effects of frost, when left in the fields
where it has grown, and when laid above the
earth in order to be devoured, the root forms the
best food that is yet known for pheasants, as is
shown by the choice of the animals. This last
observation alludes only to the general utility of
the root, and is not in favour of such application.
Potatoes will produce, on the proper soils, an
average of fifteen tons per acre, which will give
4,800 lbs. of nutritive matter, each pound yield-
ing 1,000 grains. The red potato has given, in
64° drachms, about 250 grains of nutritive mat-
ter, which consisted of starch 204, and 46 of
saccharine, mucilaginous, and albuminous matters.
Potatoes are superior to Swedish turnips in nutri-
tive matter, in the ratio of '200 to 64, and to
138
THE TUBEROUS PLANTS.
beet-root in the ratio of 200 to 150, and to
cabbages in the ratio of 200 to 73. One hun-
dred pounds of potatoes yield twenty-five pounds
of nutritive matter. The most recent analysis
of the potato tuber gives the composition as
under : —
Water 742
Pul P 6.8
Starch 13 3
Albumen o.9
Su gar 3.3
F at o.l
Acids and Salts ... 1.4
100.0
The quantity of water that is contained in the
turnip and potato, 89 and 74 per cent., affords a
most notable instance of the very little reliance
that can be placed on the results of chymical
analysis, as an indication of the nutritive pro-
perties of any vegetable substance. No science
would recommend a priori any plant for profit-
able use, that contained so large a per centage
of water, if the quality were not previously
known; neither is the difference in the quantity
of water in the potato and the turnip sufficient
to account for the vast difference that exists
between the two plants in point of nutritive
POTATO.
139
value. For most purposes, tire potato is improved
by boiling and steaming; while the turnip is
equally unfitted by that process for general use.
The ease and little trouble that attend the cul-
tivation of the potato and the turnip, as com-
pared with cabbages, beet-root, carrots, and
parsnips, very much enhance the practical value,
while the greater readiness in storing, and in the
process of application to animals, tends further
to increase the general estimation. If the first
place in point of general utility must be con-
ceded to the turnip in the various cases of soil
and climate, and the most extensive use of the
root, the second must be yielded to the potato
without hesitation, and almost in the same
breath. The prejudices that exist against the
potato, arise wholly from want of consideration,
and from hasty conclusions. The plant is said
to exhaust the soil, but there is no evident proof;
on the other hand, practice always shows a
finely pulverised soil after a crop of potatoes,
arising from the stirrings which the land under-
goes during the raising of the crop of roots. The
culture of potatoes forms a very good prepara-
tive for wheat; and grass seeds have ever been
observed to take a quicker hold, and to thrive
more kindly on potato grounds than after any
other green-crop culture. The crop is also sold
away; whereas, turnips are consumed on the
farm, so that in point of a returning quality, or
140
THE TUBEROUS PLANTS.
value in point of manure, no fair comparison
exists.
Potatoes may be planted in the usual way in
October and November, and will, notwithstand-
ing the danger of the frost, yield a larger pro-
duce. They will be a month earlier than the
spring-planted sets, which is a matter of some
consequence in a precarious climate, where the
land is to be sown with wheat after the crop of
potatoes is raised. These facts are now most
fully confirmed by experience.
In the year 1845, the potato was attacked by a
disease called the rot, or murrain, which destroyed,
in that and the subsequent years, full half the
crop, and reduced the poorer classes of the
people almost to starvation, and raised the retail
price to three half-pence and two-pence per
pound. Late in July, 1845, accounts were re-
ceived from the Isle of Wight, that the potato
haulm and leaves were attacked by some un-
known disease, which produced a series of black
spots, accompanied by a nauseating odour, and
was succeeded by a rapid and entire decay of the
herbage. In England, the same effects were
observed in August; and by the end of the
month, the black, or clingy brown marking of
the leaves, was noticed in most parts of the
kingdom. The subsequent progress of the ma-
lady on the roots may be stated, in saying, that
the spottings and ulcerous erosions on the pulps
POTATO.
141
of many tubers, and the entire fermentative
decay of others, wherein the condition of the
pulp was brought to the condition of thick ropy
yeast, with a development of ammonia, marked
the final condition of the vegetable, so far as the
malady had been extended ; and thus the matter
rested, till the season occurred for planting the
crops of the next year.
Such a calamitous occurrence did not fail to
attract much notice; and the Government felt
interested in an affair pregnant with such great
mischief to the sustentation of the people, and
the quietude of society. Scientific investigations
were instituted to the expense of £19,000, but
ended in no particular result. Observation and
conjecture were also very busily employed; but
beyond the most evanescent suppositions, nothing
has yet been advanced, with respect to the cause
or cure. Spotted leaflets from a most luxuriant
herbage, were repeatedly examined and dissected.
A white suffused mealiness had been first ob-
served round the spots, but only upon the under
surface of the leaves; and this, when an atom of
the cuticle covered with it was placed under a
powerful magnifier, was immediately discovered to
be a fungus, most likely to be a borytis, consisting
of delicate fibres, arising from a reticulated web-
like system, and supporting at some of their
summits, egg-shaped, brownish, semi-transparent
spores. The elevated fibres were hygrometric,
142 THE TUBEROUS PLANTS.
for when touched by the breath during inspec-
tion, they rotated from their bases, carrying
round with them the spores, which, in some in-
stances, were seen to explode. Hence it may be
concluded, that a fungus, or mouldiness, is a
concomitant of the early stage of the malady;
but how that can be reckoned the primary cause
of the disease does by no means appear, since, in
itself, it is, in most instances, the result of fer-
mentation and decay. The safest scientific con-
clusion is, that the disease proceeds from
electricity, as induced by direct solar power; and
recent discoveries have tended to prove, that
electricity, magnetism, and light, are intimately
connected. The malady must be considered as
an epidemic, which can only disappear with the
absence of its exciting cause.
The most plausible practical theory that has
been put forth for the cure of the malady is, that
as autumn-planted potatoes yield much the
largest crop; and as the disease in the plant does
not appear till late in July, or in August; and as
the autumn-planting is, at least, a month earlier
ingrowth; the planting of the roots in autumn
might probably push the vegetation so much
earlier, as to place it beyond the reach of affec-
tion, and beyond the power of receiving the
atmospheric taint: at an advanced state, it may
not be so liable to be affected.
A similar affection has partially appeared in
POTATO.
143
the turnips, and the white poplar tree ; but as
only the leaves of the turnips showed decay,
doubts may be entertained if the disease be
strictly generic.
The crops of potatoes were nearly affected in
an equal degree in the years 1845, 1846, and
1847.
. Wertheimcr and Co., Printers, Finsbnry Circus.
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