Of all roots Mangolds are the rankest feeders, removing more plant food from the soil than any other root crop. The crop of Mr. Albert Fearing, of Hingham, Mass., was sixty tons of roots, and if the tops were in the usual proportion, of about one-third, they weighed twenty tons more, giving the enormous yield of eighty-tons of green food from one acre of ground. The crop raised on Deer Island, in Boston harbor, was about seventy tons to the acre; with a like proportion of tops the total yield must have been over a hundred tons. In the sewage farms of England eighty tons of roots have been raised on an acre of ground. Fearing applied fifteen cords of manure to his acre of ground; of the quantity applied to the Deer Island crop I regret I have not the data at hand. If the mere bulk alone was to be aimed at in the crop, the problem would be a very simple one, but there are three points to be considered: first, how to get a crop that shall be great in bulk and at the same time give us the second desirable point, viz.: _ripeness_, and thus insure the third desirable point, viz.: _the highest percentage of sugar it is possible for the roots to acquire_. This matter of the value of Mangolds, for feeding purposes, being in about the same proportion as the sugar present, though appertaining to that part of this Treatise which treats of “Feeding to Stock,” yet has so direct a bearing on the manuring of the crops that I will take it up at this place. The recent researches of that distinguished chemist, Prof. Voelcker of England, than whom there is no better authority, has thrown much light on the question of manure in its application to this crop. The Professor takes the position that the nutritious value of roots is in proportion to the amount of dry matter in them, and that the percentage of sugar present coincides with that of dry matter, the proportion of sugar rising or falling with the percentage of dry matter in the roots. That the feeding value does not depend on the proportion of nitrogen they contain, is proved theoretically, by the fact that the percentage is very much higher in the early stages of growth, before the crop is matured, than it is later in the season, while in the experiments of Mr. Lawes in feeding sheep, the lot containing the most nitrogen in the way of nutrition gave the poorest results. Assuming with Prof. Voelcker that bulk should not be sought at a disproportionate sacrifice of sugar in the crop, and that certain soils and certain manures and certain methods of cultivation are more favorable than others to the development of this desirable proportion. I present extracts from his valuable article on “Root Crops as affected by Soil and Manures.”