Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 1.djvu/322

Rh 300 AGRICULTUKE [HISTORICAL plants on one ridge from those on the contiguous one he called an interval ; the distance between the rows on the same ridge, a space or partition; the former was stirred repeatedly by the horse-hoc, the latter by the hand-hoe. The extraordinary attention this ingenious person gave to his mode of culture is perhaps without a parallel : &quot; I formerly was at much pains,&quot; he says, &quot;and at some charge in improving my drills for planting the rows at very near distances, and had brought them to such perfection, that one horse would draw a drill with eleven shares, making the rows at three inches and a half distance from one another ; and at the same time sow in them three very different sorts of seeds, which did not mix ; and these, too, at different depths. As the barley-rows were seven inches asunder, the barley lay four inches deep. A little more than three inches above that, in the same channels, was clover ; betwixt every two of these rows was a row of St Foin, covered half an inch deep. &quot; I had a good crop of barley the first year ; the next year two crops of broad clover, where that was sown ; and where hop- clover was sown, a mixed crop of that and St Foiu ; but I am since, by experience, so fully convinced of the folly of these, or any other mixed crops, and more especially of narrow spaces, that I have demolished these instruments, in their full perfection, as a vain curiosity, the drift and use of them being contrary to the true principles and practice of horse-hoeing. &quot; 1 In the culture of wheat, he began with ridges six feet broad, or eleven on a breadth of 66 feet ; but on this he afterwards had fourteen ridges. After trying different num bers of rows on a ridge, he at last preferred two, with an intervening space of about 10 inches. He allowed only three pecks of seed for an acre. The first hoeing was per formed by turning a furrow from the row, as soon as the plant had put forth four or five leaves, so that it was done before or at the beginning of winter. The next hoeing was in spring, by which the earth was returned to the plants. The subsequent operations depended upon the circumstances and condition of the land and the state of the weather. The next year s crop of wheat was sown upon the intervals which had been unoccupied the former year ; but this he does not seem to think was a matter of much consequence. &quot;My field,&quot; he observes, &quot;whereon is now the thirteenth crop of wheat, has shown that the rows may successfully stand upon any part of the ground. The ridges of this field were, for the twelfth crop, changed from six feet to four feet six inches. In order for this alteration the ridges were ploughed down, and then the next ridges were laid out the same way as the former, but one foot six inches narrower, and the double rows drilled on their tops ; whereby, of consequence, there must be some rows standing on every part of the ground, both on the former partitions and on every part of the intervals. Notwithstanding this, there was no manner of difference in the goodness of the rows ; and the whole field was in every part of it equal, and the best, I believe, that ever grew on it. It is now the thirteenth crop, likely to be good, though the land was not ploughed crossways. 2 It follows, from this singular management, that Tull thought a succession of crops of different species altogether unnecessary ; and he labours hard to prove against Dr Woodward, that the advantages of such a change under his plan of tillage were quite chimerical, though he seems to admit the benefit of a change of the seed itself. In cultivating turnips he made the ridges of the same breadth as for wheat, but only one row was drilled on each. His management, while the crop was growing, differs very little from the present practice. When drilled on the level, it is impossible, he observes, to hoe-plough them so well as when they are planted upon ridges. But the seed was deposited at different depths, the half about four inches deep, and the other half exactly over that, at the depth of half an inch. &quot;Thus planted, let the weather be never so dry, the deepest seed rill come up, but if it raineth immediately after planting, the shallow will come up first. We also mako it come up at four times, by m-ixing our seed half new and half old, the new coming up a day quicker than the old. These four comings up give it so 1 Horse-hoeing Husbandry, j 62. Lend. 1762. 2 Ibui. p. 424 many chances for escaping the fly ; it beiu^ often seen that the seed sown over night will be destroyed by the fly, when that sown tho next morning will escape, and vice versa : or you may hoc-plough them when the fly is like to devour them ; this will bury the greatest part of these enemies : or else you may drill in another row without new-ploughing the laud.&quot; Drilling and horse and hand hoeing seem to have been in use before the publication of Tull s book. &quot;Hoeing,&quot; he says, &quot; may be divided into deep, which is our horse-hoeing ; and shallow, which is the English hand-hoeing ; and also the shallow horse-hoeing used in some places betwixt rows, where the intervals are very narrow, as 16 or 18 inches. This is but an imitation of the hand-hoe, or a succedaneum to it, and can neither supply the iise of dung nor fallcnv, and may be properly called scratch-hoeing.&quot; But in his mode of forming ridges his practice seems to have Lccu original ; his implements display much ingenuity ; and his claim to the title of father of the present horse-hoeing husbandry of Great Britain seems indisputable. A trans lation of Tull s book was undertaken at one and the same time in France, by three different persons of consideration, without the privity of each other. Two of them afterwards put their papers into the hands of the third, M. du Hamel du Monceau, of the Royal Academy of Sciences at Paris, who published a treatise on husbandry, on the principles of Mr Tull, a few years after. But Tull seems to have had very few followers in England for more than thirty years. The present method of drilling and horse-hoeing turnips was not introduced into Northumberland till about the year 1780 ; 3 and it was then borrowed from Scotland, the farmers of which had the merit of first adopting Tull s management in the culture of this root about 1760. From Scotland it made its way, but slowly, into the southern parts of the island. Tull s doctrines and practices being quite in advance of his own times, were, as is usual in such cases, vehemently opposed by his contemporaries. He was, in consequence, involved in frequent controversy, in conducting which he occasionally showed an asperity of temper which excites our regret, but which is not to be wondered at, when we consider the trials of patience which he encountered from the unreasonable opposition of the agricultural community to his improvements ; the thwarting of his experiments bj his own labourers, who, in their ignorant zeal against inno vations, wilfully broke his machines, and disregarded his orders; and from acute and protracted bodily disease. The soundness of his views and practice, as regards turnip culture, came by-and-by to be acknowledged, and Lave since been generally adopted. But it was only some twenty-five years ago that his full merit began to be under stood. The Rev. Mr Smith, in his Word in Season, about that time recalled attention to Tull s peculiar system of wheat culture in a way that startled the whole community ; while Professor Way, in a series of eloquent lectures delivered before the Royal Agricultural Society, showed that his science was true in the main, and even more strik ingly ahead of his times than his practice. Among the English writers of this period may be men tioned Bradley, Lawrence, Hules, Miller, Ellis, Smith, Hill, Hitt, Lisle, and Home. Most of their works went through several editions in a few years, at once a proof of the estimation in which they Avcre held, and of the direction of the public mind towards investigating the principles and practice of agriculture. Of the progress of the art in Scotland, till towards the Scotls end of the 17th century, we are almost entirely ignorant. progn The first work, written by Donaldson, was printed in 1697, under the title of Husbandry Anatomized; or, an Inquiry into the Present Manner of Telling and Manuring the 1 Northumberland Survey, p. 100.