this mode, it must be evident, is but
trifling, compared with the slower method of hand-planting. It requires
a skillful ploughman, a quick, active lad, and a good yoke of oxen, and
the extent of the work will depend somewhat upon the state of the turf.
The nutritive equivalent for potatoes in a hundred pounds of good hay is
319 pounds; that is, it will take 3.19 pounds of potatoes to afford the
same amount of nourishment as one pound of hay. The great value of roots
is as a change or condiment calculated to keep the animal in a healthy
condition.

[Illustration: A WEST HIGHLAND OX.]

The CARROT is somewhat extensively fed, and is a valuable root for milch
cows. This, like the potato, has been cultivated and improved from a
wild plant. Carrots require a deep, warm, mellow soil, thoroughly
cultivated, but clean, and free from weed-seed. The difference between a
very good profit and a loss on the crop depends much upon the use of
land and manures perfectly free from foul seeds of any kind. Ashes,
guano, seaweed, ground bones, and other similar substances, or
thoroughly-rotted and fermented compost, will answer the purpose.

After plowing deep, and harrowing carefully, the seed should be planted
with a seed-sower, in drills about eighteen inches apart, at the rate of
four pounds to the acre, about the middle of May. The difference
between sowing on the fifteenth of May and on the tenth of June in New
England is said to be nearly one-third in the crop on an average of
years. In weeding, a little wheel hoe is invaluable, as with it a large
part of the labor of cultivation is saved. A skillful hand can run this
hoe within a half an inch of the young plants without injury, and go
over a large space in the course of a day, if the land was properly
prepared in the first place.

The American farmer should always plan to economize labor, which is the
great item of expense upon a farm. By this is not meant that he should
strive to shirk or avoid work, but that he should make the least amount
of work accomplish the greatest and most profitable results.
Labor-saving machinery on the farm is applied, not to reduce the number
of hours of labor, or to make the owner a man of leisure--who is,
generally, the unhappiest man in the world--but to enable him to
accomplish the greatest results in the same time that he would be
compelled to obtain smaller ones.

Carrots will continue to grow and increase in size late into the fall.
When