“Land highly manured with rich dung from the fattening boxes or stables, induces luxurious and vigorous growth in root crops, and, as is well known, has a tendency to develop over-luxuriance in the tops. This is the case more particularly if the dung is derived from fattening beasts, liberally supplied with oil-cake and artificial food, rich in nitrogenous constituents. If the Autumn turns out fairly dry and warm, the roots in highly manured land continue to grow vigorously, the bulbs swell to a large dimension, and if the weather in September and October continues warm and dry, a heavy weight, and fairly ripe roots, result from the liberal use of rich dung. But should the Autumn be cold and wet, too liberal application of good, well-rotten dung is apt to maintain the luxuriant tops in a vigorous, active-growing condition, at a period of the year when the crop has to be taken up, and the result is an immature root crop, of a low feeding value. Although the bulbs may be of a good size, they turn out, when grown under such conditions, watery, deficient in sugar, and not nearly as nutritious as they would have been had a more moderate dressing of dung been put upon the land. The main cause of the immature condition and low-feeding quality of Mangolds grown with an excessive quantity of rich dung is the comparatively large amount of ammonial and nitrogenous constituents in the dung; for numerous field experiments have shown that the peculiar tendency of ammonia salts, and of readily available nitrogenous substances is to induce luxuriant leaf-development and vigorous and prolonged growth, which results frequently in a more or less immature condition of the roots. There is thus danger of over-manuring crops; and the desire to produce heavy crops of Mangolds not unfrequently leads practical men not to appreciate sufficiently this danger. It is quite true Mangolds are very greedy feeders, and no doubt some soils will swallow up almost any amount of dung; but at the same time it has to be borne in mind that all land is not alike, and that there are many naturally rich clay loams containing immense stores of plant food which requires only to be brought into play by good cultivation in order to become available to plants. I am much inclined to think that it is a mistake to manure soils of the latter description too liberally with dung, even for Mangolds, and that in many cases a more economical result, and certainly a better quality of Mangolds, although not so heavy a crop, would be given, if instead of all the enormous dressings of dung which are often applied to that crop, the lands were manured in Autumn with only half the quantity of dung, and the seed drilled in with three to four cwt. of superphosphate or dissolved bones, which manures, as we shall see presently have a tendency to produce early maturity in roots. We frequently hear of complaints that Mangolds scour, or do not keep well. Complaints of this kind are only expressions in other