A Victorian professor of agriculture asks where root crops came from, arguing that parsnip, carrot, turnip and beet were bred from wild plants with mean, woody roots. He goes on to the trueness and degeneration of varieties, the adulteration of seed and the art and mystery of turnip-seed fraud, and other practical questions of the field.
A window on mid-Victorian farming science and early plant-breeding experiments. Download the free EPUB.