The introduction of the turnip as a field crop is one of the most important events in the history of British agriculture. It has rendered possible a rotation of crops, which has been extremely advantageous; and has made the supply of butcher-meat more constant, by providing a supply of winter-food for cattle and sheep, whereas, formerly, all depended on the pasture. Turnip-husbandry was introduced into Scotland from Norfolk in the latter part of the 18th c., but soon attained a development, and was carried to a perfection in Scotland far beyond what it had previously reached anywhere. The climate of Scotland is particularly adapted to it, as is also that of Ireland ;. moist weather, both in summer and autumn, being sui.table to the turnip; whilst the climate of North America is so un favorable to it that it has not become an important crop there. Of late years, turnip crops in Britain have suffered very much from the disease called anbury (q.v.), or fingers and toes. This is not the case in Norfolk, and the exemption is supposed to be due to the use of clay-marl as a manure; but the whole subject is involved in obscurity. The turnip not unfrequently suffers from a fungus of the genus botrytis (B. parasitica), allied to that which is supposed to cause the potato disease. It infests plants of rank growth, attacking their roots, which are weakened by the too great luxuriance of the leaves. Plants weakened by drought 'Ire liable to suffer from a white mold, a species of oidium, which attacks the leaves, and renders the plant worthless. The leaves are devoured by the turnip-fly, turnip-flea, or turnip-beetle (haltica nemorum), and by other species of the same genus. The nigger caterpillar, the larva of athalict spinarum, also devours the leaves, as well as the caterpillars of white butterflies (ponti abrassicce repce, and napi), and of some moths. The leaves are also mined by the larvte of several dipterous flies. Several species of aphis suck the juices of the leaves, and one (A. fioris raper) devotes its attention to the young crops in seed leaf, which are also attacked by a rose-chafer (cetonia aurita), and a minute beetle (metigethes ceneus). Slugs, snails, and wire-worms
are among the enemies of the turnip.
The young leaves of the turnip are good as greens, and particularly those of the Swedish turnip, when it has begun to sprout in spring.
TER, an implement used for cutting turnips for cattle. It is useful, not only as saving the teeth of sheep, which are apt to be much injured by eating turnips, but as preventing waste, for sheep feeding upon turnips scoop out a part, and leave the rest to rot. The oldest and simplest turnip-cutter acts by mere pressure, and is like a large nut-cracker on a stand. Many kinds are now in use, of which perhaps the best are those having knife-edges on the surface of a cylinder or cone, which are brought to act on the turnips by turning a handle.
a name given to several insects destructive to turnips. It is often given to allied. (or &silica) nemorum, also called TURNIP-FLEA, from its skipping or leap mg powers, but which is truly a very small beetle, with long and strong hind-legs, and ample wings, of a shining black color, with two yellowish stripes down the wing-cases, and ocherous legs. It swarms in meadows and hedge-rows in most parts of Britain from March to October, the larva feeding on many cruciferous plants. It often commits great ravages in turnip-fields, while the turnips are very young. The female lays her eggs on the under side of the leaf, and the minute larva mines in the leaf, under the skin, making a tortuous gallery. Farmers sometimes steep the seed of turnips, in order to prevent the ravages of this insect, but no good can be thus done, as the eggs are not in the seed.
The TunxrP-FLY, more properly so called, is anthomyia radicum, a dipterous insect of the family muscida, and of the same genus with the cabbage-fly and beet-fly. It attacks the root of the turnip, as the cabbage-fly does that of the cabbage, the larva living in the root.