l; but it
is most likely to manifest itself on soils that have been previously
cropped with cabbage, turnip, or some other member of the Brassica
family.

Farmers find that, as a rule, _it is not safe to follow cabbage, ruta
baga, or any of the Brassica family, with cabbage, unless three or four
years have intervened between the crops_; and I have known an instance
in growing the Marblehead Mammoth, where, though five years had
intervened, that portion of the piece occupied by the previous crop
could be distinctly marked off by the presence of club-foot.

Singular as it may appear, old gardens are an exception to this rule.
While it is next to impossible to raise, in old gardens, a fair turnip,
free from club-foot, cabbages may be raised year after year on the same
soil with impunity, or, at least, with but trifling injury from that
disease. This seems to prove, contrary to English authority, that
club-foot in the turnip tribe is the effect of a different cause from
the same disease in the cabbage family.

There is another position taken by Stephens in his "Book of the Farm,"
which facts seem to disprove. He puts forth the theory that "all such
diseases arise from poverty of the soil, either from want of manure when
the soil is naturally poor, or rendered effete by over-cropping." There
is a farm on a neck of land belonging to this town (Marblehead, Mass.),
which has peculiar advantages for collecting sea kelp and sea moss, and
these manures are there used most liberally, particularly in the
cultivation of cabbage, from eight to twelve cords of rotten kelp, which
is stronger than barn manure, and more suitable food for cabbage, being
used to the acre. A few years ago, on a change of tenants, the new
incumbent heavily manured a piece for cabbage, and planted it; but, as
the season advanced, stump-foot developed in every cabbage on one side
of the piece, while all the remainder were healthy. Upon inquiry, he
learned that, by mistake, he had overlapped the cabbage plot of last
season just so far as the stump-foot extended. In this instance, it
could not have been that the cabbage suffered for want of food; for, not
only was the piece heavily manured that year and the year previous, but
it had been liberally manured through a series of years, and, to a large
extent, with the manure which, of all others, the cabbage tribe delight
in, rotten kelp and sea mosses. I have known other instances where soil,
naturally quite stro