"If the tale of agricultural improvement could be told in say two syllables, it would be those which spell turnips. To ask a farmer now-a-days to farm without turnips, would be like asking the of old to make bricks without straw; and yet there was a time, and not so far back in the history of this country, when turnips were as great a novelty as was in our own day. There were no turnips at no very remote period. Turnip husbandry is later than our first . ... ... Turnips are the raw material of beef and mutton. Turnips have made us for a very great part of the year independent of grass, and have enabled us to go on feeding the whole year round. ... But the good of turnip husbandry is not by any means confined to the production of beef and mutton. Turnips make , and manure makes corn. Turnips really and truly mean everything. Get but turnips, and all other things are added, or rather implied. The great value of guano and other portable manures is in enabling turnips to be grown. No man can tell how much turnip husbandry has augmented our annual product of corn."