Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/319

Rh SUMMARY.] AGRICULTURE 297 orden, &amp;gt;18. For more than fifty years after this, or till near the middle of the 17th century, there are no systematic works on husbandry, though several treatises on particular departments of it. From these it is evident that all the different operations of the farmer were performed with more care and correctness than formerly ; that the fallows were better worked, the fields kept freer from weeds, and much more attention paid to manures of every kind. A few of the writers of this period deserve to be shortly noticed. [at, 1594. Sir Hugh Plat, in his Jewel House of Art and Nature, printed in 1594 (which West on in his catalogue erroneously ascribes to Gabriel Plattes), makes some useful observations on manures, but chiefly collected from other writers. His censure of the practice of leaving farm dung lying scattered about is among the most valuable. Sir John Norden s Surveyor s Dialogue, printed in 1607, and reprinted with additions in 1G18, is a work of con siderable merit. The first three books of it relate to the rights of the lord of the manor and the various tenures by which landed property was then held, with the obligations which they imposed. Among others, we find the singular custom, so humorously described in the Spectator, of the incontinent widow riding upon a ram. In the fifth book there are a good many judicious observations on the &quot; different natures of grounds, how they may be employed, how they may be bettered, reformed, and amended.&quot; The famous meadows near Salisbury are mentioned ; and when cattle have fed their fill, hogs, it is pretended, &quot; are made fat with the remnant namely, with the knots and sappe of the grasse.&quot; &quot; Clouer grasse, or the grasse honey suckle&quot; (white clover), is directed to be sown with other hay seeds. &quot; Carrot rootes&quot; were then raised in several parts of England, and sometimes by farmers. London street and stable dung was carried to a distance by water, though it appears from later writers to have been got for the trouble of removing. And leases of 21 years are recommended for persons of small capital, as better than employing it in purchasing land, -an opinion that prevails very generally among our present farmers. Bees seem to have been great favourites with these early writers; and among others, there is a treatise by Butler, a gentleman of Oxford, called the Feminine Monarchie, or the History of Bees, printed in 1609, full of all manner of quaintness and pedantry. We shall pass over Markham, Mascall, Gabriel Plattes, and several other authors of this period, the best part of their writings being preserved by Blythe and Hartlib, of whom we shall say a little immediately. In Sir Ptichard Weston s Discourse on the Husbandry of Brabant and Flanders, published by Hartlib in 1645, we may mark the dawn of the vast improvements which have since been effected in Britain. This gentleman was ambassador from England to the elector palatine and king of Bohemia in 1619, and had the merit of being the first who introduced the great clover, as it was then called, into English agriculture, about 1645, and probably turnips also. His directions for the cultivation of clover are better than was to be expected. It thrives best, he says, when you sow it on the worst and barrenest ground, such as our worst heath ground is in England. The ground is to be pared and burnt, and unslacked lime must be added to the ashes. It is next to be well ploughed and harrowed ; and about ten pounds of clover seed must be sown on an acre in April or the end of March. If you intend to preserve seed, then the second crop must bo let stand till it come to a full and dead ripeness, and you shall have at the least five bushels per acre. Being once sown, it will last five years ; and then being ploughed, it will yield, three or four years together, rich crops of wheat, and after that a crop of oats, with which clover seed is to be sown again. Tt is in itself ntler on ses, 1609 r eston, an excellent manure, Sir Richard adds ; and so it should Early be, to enable land to bear this treatment. In less than ten v &amp;gt; rk#. years after its introduction, that is, before 1655, the cul ture of clover, exactly according to the present method, seems to have been well known in England, and it had also made its way to Ireland. A great many works on agriculture appeared during the Blytho, time of the Commonwealth, of which Blythe s Improver 164P. Improved and Hartlib s Legacy are the most valuable. The first edition of the former was published in 1649, and of the latter in 1650; and both of them were enlarged in subsequent editions. In the first edition of the Improver Improved, no mention is made of clover, nor in the second of turnips, but in the third, published in 1662, clover is treated of at some length, and turnips are recommended as an excellent cattle crop, the culture of which should be extended from the kitchen garden to the field. Sir Richard Weston must have cultivated turnips before this ; for Blythe says, that Sir Richard affirmed to himself he did feed his swine with them. They were first given boiled, but afterwards the swine came to eat them raw, and would run after the carts, and pull them forth as they gathered them, an expression which conveys an idea of their beii g cultivated in the fields. Blythe s book is tho first systematic work in which there are some traces of the alternate husbandry so beneficially established since, by interposing clover and turnip between culmiferous crops. Ho is a great enemy to commons and common fields, and to retaining land in old pasture, unless it be of the best quality. His description of the different kinds of ploughs is interesting ; and he justly recommends such as were drawn by two horses (some even by one horse), in preference to the weighty and clumsy machines which required four or more horses or oxen. Almost all the manures now used seem to have been then well known, and he brought lime himself from a distance of 20 miles. He speaks of an instrument which ploughed, sowed, and harrowed at the same time ; and the setting of corn was then a subject of much discussion. &quot; It was not many years,&quot; says Blythe, &quot; since the famous city of London petitioned the Parliament of England against two anusancies or offensive commodities, which were likely to come into great use and esteem ; and that was Newcastle coal, in regard of their stench, &amp;lt;tc., and hops, in regard they would spoyle the taste of drink, and endanger the people.&quot; Hartlib s Legacy is a very heterogeneous performance, Hartlifc containing, among some very judicious directions, a great 1650. deal of rash speculation. Several of the deficiencies which the writer complains of in English agriculture must be placed to the account of our climate, and never have been or can be supplied. Some of his recommen dations are quite unsuitable to the state of the country, and display more of general knowledge and good inten tion than of either the theory or practice of agriculture. Among the subjects deserving notice may be mentioned the practice of steeping and liming seed corn as a preven tive of smut ; changing every year the species of grain, and bringing seed corn from a distance ; ploughing down green crops as manure ; and feeding horses with broken oats and chaff. This writer seems to differ a good deal from Blythe about the advantage of interchanging tillage and pasture. &quot; It were no losse to this island,&quot; he says, &quot; if that we should not plough at all, if so be that we could certainly have corn at a reasonable rate, and likewise vent for all our manufactures of wool;&quot; and one reason for this is, that pasture employeth more hands than tillage, instead of de populating the country, as was commonly imagined. The grout, which he mentions &quot; as coming over to us in Hol land ships,&quot; about which he desires information, was pro bably the same with our present shelled barley ; and mills I. 38