PARSNIP. | rprising effect on the cream, and produce e yellow butter which will keep admirly, if properly salted and prepared, preving an excellent and superior flavour. They are taken up with a fork, or ploughed in October or November. The average duce, per statute acre, is nine to eleven 18. The dry leaves of the parsnip are given cows. The parsnip will fatten pigs (or altry if boiled) in an extraordinary man, and it is certainly one of the best prepaory crops for wheat. It will keep in store Lil April, and it is advisable to remove leaves before the roots are stored. The snip being a very hardy vegetable, the st does not injure the seed or the young nt; and, if thought desirable, the former y be sown as soon as they are ripe in umn. There are only one or two varieties parsnips, of which the common species is best for field culture. 1000 parts of the snip yielded Davy 90 parts of sacchamatter, and 9 parts of mucilage. urn. Roy. Agr. Soc. vol. ii. p. 419.; Brit. sb. vol. ii. p. 228.; Trans. Hort. Soc. i. p. 6.; Malcolm's Surrey, vol. ii. 93.) Garden Culture. The soil in which the snip succeeds best is a rich, dry, sandy m, and the deeper the better. The most nical to it are gravel or clay. It is alys beneficial to trench the ground two des deep, a little manure being turned with the bottom spit. If the soil is suite to them, they are not much benefited the general application of manure at time of sowing, but often injured, in sequence of numerous fibres being ined. Dr. Macculloch says, that in the ind of Guernsey, which has long been ebrated for the fineness of its parsnips, weed is the manure chiefly employed. aled. Hort. Mem.) Of excrementitious nure, that of pigeons is the best. Deved leaves are also very favourable to its owth. The situation cannot be too open. It is propagated by seed. The usual time sowing is from the end of February to e beginning of April, but the earlier the tter. It has been recommended in field ltivation to sow them in September; in e garden, when sown at this season, they so obtain a finer flavour, but many of em in general run to seed. In the isle of uernsey, they regulate their time of sowg according to the soil; in the most faourable soils they sow in January; or if he soil is wet or stiff, they do not insert the eed until the latter end of March. The seed is sown broadcast, rather thin, nd well raked in. The compartment being aid out in beds, not more than four feet vide, for the convenience of weeding, &c. PARTRIDGE. When the seedlings are two or three inches high, they are carefully thinned to ten inches apart, and the weeds removed both by hand and small-hoeing. The beds require to be frequently looked over to remove all seedlings that may spring up afresh, as well as to be frequently hoed, until the plants so cover the ground as to render it impracticable. The roots may be taken up as wanted, in September, but they do not attain maturity till October, and which is intimated by the decay of the leaves. In November, part of the crop may be taken up, and the tops being cut close off, laid in alternate layers, with sand, for use in frosty weather. The remainder may be left in the ground, and taken up as required, as they are never injured by the most intense frost, but, on the contrary, rendered sweeter. In February or March, however, any remaining must be extracted, otherwise they will vegetate. Being preserved in sand, they continue good until the end of April or May. For the production of seed, some of the finest roots are best allowed to remain where grown; or else, being raised in February, planted in a situation, open but sheltered from violent winds. Seed should never be employed that is more than a twelvemonth old, as it has generally lost its vegetative power when of a greater age. (G. W. Johnson's Kitchen Garden.) PARSNIP, THE COW. See CowPARSNIP. PARSNIP, THE SEA. See PRICKLY SAMPHIRE. PARSNIP, THE WATER. See WATER-Parsnip. PARTERRE. (Fr.) In gardening a system of beds of different shapes and sizes, in which flowers are cultivated, with intervening spaces of gravel or turf for walking on.. PARTRIDGE. (Perdix.) The enlarged demands (observes Mr. Yarrell) of an increasing population, the tempting prices of seasons of scarcity, or the progress of science unfolding the nature of soils, have each in turn induced the cultivation of various tracts of ground unploughed before; and as the labours of the agriculturist encroach upon the boundaries of the moor, the grouse retires, and the partridge takes its place upon the land. The districts best cultivated, and producing the most corn, frequently also producing the greatest number of partridges. Of a bird so universally known, little that is new can be said; with its appearance and its habits almost all are familiar. These birds pair in February, but seldom begin to lay eggs till towards the end of April or the beginning of May. A slight depression in the ground, with a fee dead leaves or dried grass bents scratched | together, serves for a nest. The eggs are of a uniform olive brown colour, one inch five lines in length, by one inch and half a line in breadth, and from twelve to twenty are produced by one female. The common partridge (P. cinerea) is very generally distributed over this country. The whole length of the male bird is twelve inches and a half. The red-legged partridge (P. rubra) is not so common as the last described species, and, as an object of pursuit, is not much esteemed by sportsmen, being stronger on the wing than the common partridge, usually more wild, and accordingly much more difficult to get shots at. The eggs are from fifteen to eighteen in number, of a reddish yellow white, spotted, and speckled with reddish brown, one inch seven lines and a half long, by one inch three lines broad. They feed, like other partridges, on seeds, grain, and insects; they frequent turnip fields, but appear to prefer heaths, commons, and other waste land, interspersed with bushes. The whole length of the red-legged partridge is thirteen inches and a half. (Yarrell's Brit Birds, vol. ii. p. 333-347.) PARTURITION. See CALVING OF Cows, ABORTION, GESTATION, PREGNANCY, &c. PASSION-FLOWER. (Passiflora, from passio, passion; and flos, a flower; in allusion to the filamentous appendages or rays bearing a resemblance to the cross; the emblem of the passion of Christ.) The species of this interesting and elegant genus are admirably adapted for stove and greenhouse climbers, being of easy culture, free growers, and, if allowed plenty of room, producing abundance of beautiful flowers. Many of the kinds produce fruit freely, from which, through impregnation, several fine hybrids have been raised. The fruit of some, as P. edulis, P. laurifolia, and P. quadrangularis, or granadilla, are eaten: the succulent pulp which surrounds the seeds is found to be fragrant, cooling, and pleasant, agreeably acid, and admirably adapted for allaying thirst in hot climates. All the species will thrive well in a mixture of loam and peat, and are easily increased by cuttings planted in sand. The hardy kinds should be planted in sheltered situations. (Paxton's Bot. Dict.; Phillips's Shrubbery, vol. ii. p. 100.) PASTE. In angling, a compounded substance used for bait. For chub a paste of cheese, butter, and saffron is used, some pand times mixed with turpentine. For carpa tench sweet pastes of new bread, with honey or sugar, are used. See Izaak Walton's Angler. PASTERN OF A HORSE. The de tance that intervenes between the joint of that name and the coronet of the hood PASTURE. (Fr.) Ground on which cattle feed. I have, under the head Gam gone at some length into the question of the grasses best adapted for different soils. Th pastures of England and Ireland exceed in extent and productiveness those of any other country of similar extent. "The exole of pastures," observes the author of The British Husbandry, vol.i. p.478., “depend greatly both upon their position and the dif ferent species of animals for whose support they are intended. Thus, uplands which av elevated, open, and dry, are the best ad for the feeding of sheep. While a beary stock is fed with more advantage upc ground which is lower in point of situatat as well as better inclosed. The soil of lands, particularly if it be of a chaliy nature, bears a sweet, though a short of grass, which is so favourable to the p turage of the smaller breeds of sheep, that although it will support but a scanty stak it yet produces the finest species of ton." These flocks of sheep, too, by t folding system, keep in cultivation many a poor thin soil, which would otherwise s worthless. There is an excellent paper, in Mr. Magillivray, on the natural pastures Scotland (Quart. Jour. Agr. vol. ii. p. 15k in which he traces the natural grasses whir are found on the highest elevations da to the valleys and sea shore. The be summits of these mountains," he remarks "exposed to the depressing influence of a low temperature, boisterous winds, abundant rains, covered for a great part the year with snow, and presenting cer bare rock or a shallow gritty soil, protes few plants of any description, and hardy dozen of those which are selected by sh as their food. These latter consist of thre or four carices or hard-grasses, one of the junci or rushes, some tufts of the common club-rush, together with the Festuca viriper and one or two other grasses. The extre heights scarcely present any other veget tion than Silene acaulis, Salix herbacea Statice armeria. Farther down the mus tains, extending downwards to about S01 feet above the level of the sea, we fin vegetation still poor and stunted, but no means deficient in beauty, and pet affording better pasturage than some of t lower grounds. We here find irrel patches of verdure, consisting chiefly of a rices and Scirpus cæspitosus, which, h PASTURE. PEA, THE. er, are also eaten by sheep; by the stream-lowing summer's grass. But should the repetition of this treatment fail to extirpate the musci, it will be more profitable to put the grass lands under a rotation of crops, and sow them anew with a mixture of grass seeds, suited to the soil and climate. For every information, however, relating to the formation of pastures, and the cultivation of the grasses, the farmer cannot consult_a better authority than the Hortus Gram. Woburnensis of the late Mr. George Sinclair. In feeding pastures it is usual with those fields which are shut up from stock, at Candlemas, to graze them in the succeeding May. Those which are fed until April may, after being shut up, be grazed again at Midsummer. If it is intended to feed a pasture during the winter, it should be allowed to rest in the months of October and November. See MEADOW and GRASSES. PATH, PUBLIC. See HIGHWAY, and WAY, RIGht of s are several species of Alpine plants. per acre PAUPERISM. See POOR LAWS, SETTLEMENT, POPULATION, &c. PEA, THE. (Pisum sativum, Fr. pois, Span. pesoles. The English is evidently a corruption of the Latin name.) This valuable plant is supposed to be a native of the south of Europe, and was cultivated by the Greeks and Romans. It is said by Acton to have been brought to this country in 1548. There are only one or two kinds of pea; the grey pea (P. arvense), and the pea cultivated as a vegetable in our gardens (P. sativum). Of the last, however, the varieties are endless. Of field peas, the varieties are distinguished as the early, and the late, ripening. The common early are small, and dark-coloured. The grey pea of this class is the most common. The later sown varieties are generally similar in their characters to garden peas; they differ, however, from them in having usually purple flowers. The most common kinds are the white, the early Charlton, and the pearl. Field peas, especially where there is a considerable demand for them, as in the neighbourhood of large towns, are a very profitable crop to be gathered green; since there is time after the peas are gathered, in the month of June, to prepare the land for a crop of turnips. Where they are grown for their seeds, the white peas are those generally cultivated for the purpose of boiling, the grey as food for animals. The pea will succeed pretty well on both heavy and light soils; but it certainly does best on the latter, especially if the land abounds with carbonate of lime. It is an excellent crop to interpose between corn crops, for it affords considerable facilities to the cleansing of the land, and is not otherwise an exhausting crop. In many parts of England a pea crop is dibbled on the clover and grass leys, and afterwards a corn crop is taken with great advantage. In others a crop of oats is taken, and then a crop of peas. When this latter mode is adopted, the land is commonly ploughed in the autumn, and by cross ploughing and harrowing in the spring brought into some degree of tilste, and then the seed may be sown with the ordinary drill. The quantity of seed employed is about three bushels per acre, and the rows are usually from nine to twenty-seven inches apart. There is every facility afforded for the use of the horse hoe. This inducement, with the early and occasional use of the hand hoe, will cleanse the land; to which end the crop of peas will, as they approach maturity, materially assist, by overpowering and stifling the weeds. and, after land has yielded one crop of barley, certainly another should not be sown, but one of pulse substituted. If these ideas are well executed, the peas and beans, in every course, will find the land in heart enough for barley, the soil will always be clean, and the crop good. Peas, when managed in a spirited manner, wil ze have the reputation of being so very certain a crop, which character has i thinks, in some measure been owing to à conduct." Peas do not need any particular dres with manure; in fact, few crops requis so little; and in many situations A produces the ill effects of rendering the plant too luxuriant. Von Thaer found several experiments, that the dung to the pea crop is the most profitable ... used as a top dressing. And, moreover. : contends, that on sandy loams it produc in this way a much better effect in the se ceeding crop. (Brit. Husb. vol. ii. p. 21s Lime and soot are, perhaps, the best drem ings for peas; and these may operate to se degree by killing the insects of the sr. which might otherwise prey upon the besides, the pea plant seems to delig every situation where it can have access calcareous matter. The crop is com cut with a hook, at the end of a staff, or half of an old scythe set in a handle. Fr these the peas are severed, and made into small bundles, called wads, or wis and these remain on the ground until the are sufficiently dry to be carried. (Lor Pract. Agr. p. 278.) The straw of pe very useful for the stock of the farm-ya cows eat it, when it has been well gather, with considerable avidity. See HALLM Peas are usually one of the most uncertain of the farmer's crops. They are subject to many casualties-to blight or mildew; to the attacks of a variety of insects, such as the grub, which devours the roots; lice, aphides, &c., which haunt the leaves; and a small beetle, the Bruchus granarius, lays its eggs in the green pods, which produce a grub, that devours its seeds. Then, again, it is frequently injured by the weather, in very dry, or in continued wet, or late harvests; and hence in the east of England it is often designated by the farmers as "a gentleman farmer's crop." This crop, however, is too often mismanaged in the way to which Arthur Young so well alluded when he told the careless farmers of his day that they were "too apt to sow this pulse when the land would yield nothing else. They have a proverb among them," he adds, "which signifies that the season does as much for peas as good husbandry; and they from thence take care that good crops shall be owing to season alone. Hence arises the general idea of peas being the most uncertain crop of all others. This is owing to their being scarcely ever sown on land that is in good order. Let," he continues, "the good husbandman lay it down as a maxim, that he should sow no crop on land that is not in good order; not merely in respect of fine tilth at the time of sowing, but also of the soil being in good heart, and clear of weeds. He would not, however, here be understood to rank all these crops together; because beans and peas will admit of cleaning while they grow. On that account, if a farmer comes to a field which his predecessor has filled with weeds, a horse-hoed crop of beans will be expedient, when a barley crop would be utterly improper; 1800 1000 parts of peas grown in Nortück 15 forded Davy 501 parts of starch, 22 of s charine matter, 35 of albuminous ma and 16 parts of extract. (Chem. Phi' 143.) The ashes obtained by burning to pea plant in flower and when ripe were e amined by M. Saussure: he found in 10 parts of these ashes, procured from th Pisum sativum in flower, of soluble s 498 parts, of earthy phosphates 172 earthy carbonates 6, silica 2-3, m oxides 1, and loss 24-65 parts. And fr the ashes of the ripe plant, soluble s 34.25 parts, earthy phosphates 22, eart carbonates 14, silica 11, metallic oxides and loss 17-25 parts. (Thomson's Ch vol. iv. p. 194.) The average price of peas per Win ter quarter, was in 1792 ber until the close of January, and during £ s. d. June and July, the sowings must be performed in sheltered situations, as south borders. In December, the rows are best drawn parallel with and within a foot of the fence. At other seasons their site cannot be too open. The amount of the imperial quarters of as and beans entered for home consumpn in England every five years, from 15 to 1835, was according to Mr. M'Culh: Culloch's Com. Dict.; Low's Prac. Agr.; llips's Cultivated Veg.) Garden Culture of the Pea. Of the nerous varieties which differ much in ir hardiness, yield, height, &c., we may merate the following; Cormack's ly dwarf-pea, early Charlton, early gol: Charlton, early Nichols's golden Charl common Charlton, Reading hotspur, ly single-blossomed, early Warwick, early arf frame, early double-blossomed frame, arf marrowfat, tall marrow fat, green Patagonia marrowfat, early green noneil, Knight's marrowfat or wrinkled pea, anish moratto, imperial blue, Prussian te, egg, white Bounceival, grey Rouncigreen Rouncival, blue Rouncival, tall zar (the sugar peas are eaten like kidy beans), crown or rose, Leadman's arf, dwarf sugar, dwarf Spanish, sickle 2. A soil moderately rich and mouldy is st suited to this vegetable; rather inning to aluminous for the lofty growers d main crops, but for the early and late es, light and dry; if naturally otherwise, ndered so by the admixture of drift sand ith the earth of the drills. Dwarf variees will grow on poorer and lighter soils In an extremely rich soil ey grow luxuriant but unproductive. hey are rather injured than benefited by he application of unreduced dung at the ime of sowing. Road dirt and rotted eaves form the best compost for them. For he early and late crops, that is, from Octo tan the others. They are propagated by seed, the sowing of which commences with the year. In January they may be inserted in sheltered borders, and large supplies in an open compartment, and thence continued throughout February and until July, once every two or three weeks. During this last month, and in the first week of August, the last sowings must be made for production the same year. For the first production in the following year, a small sowing may be performed at the close of October, and repeated about the middle of November and December, though it often happens that these are scarcely a week forwarder than those inserted in the following February. The necessary extent of the various sowings may be determined with tolerable exactness from the experiments of Bradley; he found on the average that three rods of ground, containing eighteen double rows, afforded thirty-six quarts of shelled peas. (Treat. on Husb. and Gurden. vol. iii. p.19.) The seed must be inserted in drills, or by the dibble in rows at a distance proportionate to the height to which the variety grows, as well as according to the season. When the plants have advanced to a height of two or three inches, they are to be hoed, the weeds cleared away, and earth drawn round the stems. This should be performed twice or three times gradually as they ascend, previous to the sticks being placed. It should be performed in dry weather, and the leaves never covered, or in wet weather they decay. For the winter standing crops it should be especially attended to, as it protects them greatly from frost. Peas are always best supported by sticks; if it is neglected, even for the dwarf varieties, they not only produce less, but sooner decay, are inconvenient to cultivate and gather from, and never so fine. Sticking is not required until the plants are six inches in height, or show their tendrils. If, during the time of blossoming, or swelling of the fruit, continued drought should occur, water may be very beneficially applied, it being poured between the rows, if they are in pairs, or otherwise in a shallow trench on one side of each. Watering the leaves is rather injurious. Failures in the rows of the earliest crops, whether from mice or other causes, may be rectified by transplanting. This is best performed in March; the plants thus removed must be watered |