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from ten to twelve years, with proper care, and moderate re-pairs. A set of sheep-nets, which answers admirably for thelarge quiet Leicester sheep, sufficient for the use of a mode-rate farm, may be had for a third part of that price; but theywill hardly last beyond four or five years. They are, how-ever, much more readily transported; and sheep breedersand feeders have often to take turnips at many miles distantfrom the places of their abode.
The effect of eating turnips on the place of their growthby sheep, in manuring the ground, and enabling it to growweighty crops of grain, is material, and obvious to the dailyexperience of every farmer; but no direct experiments havebeen instituted with a view to ascertain the comparative va-lue of the grain and grass crops which succeed turnipseaten upon the ground, and turnips that have been drawnand eaten elsewhere. The difference may be thus esti-mated, that in the former case, the land will carry a mode-rately good crop of spring wheat, while in the latter, the far-mer must be contented with a crop of barley or of oats. If, how-ever, the turnip crop is to be carried entirely away from thefarm, the difference is of great importance, as, carrying awaya complete dressing of dung, is equal to not less than fivepounds an acre; which sum, therefore, may be assumed asthe value of the amelioration produced by eating the turnipswhere they grow. That sum, at the same time, is by nomeans lost to the farm, though abstracted from that particu-lar field, when the turnips'are eaten in the fold-yard, feeding-houses, or upon other fields of the farm.
12. It is difficult to estimate the produce of a turnip crop,as it is hardly ever weighed. Near large towns, where tur-nips have been occasionally sold by weight to the inhabitants,for feeding cows, about 40 tons per English acre have beenraised, but that is accounted an immense crop *.