PROGKESS OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 205 



Thus we find that so long as two hundred and fifty-seven years ao;o an 

 Englishman " had discovered the utility of ammonia in bones and flesh." 

 Even in agricultural implements groat inventions wero suggested and forgot- 

 ten, because the farmers of England were not prepared to receive them. The 

 reaping machine carries us back to the agriculture of the Gauls. The horse 

 hoe, the drill, and the water or wind driven threshing machines were employed 

 in a few obscure localities, but it was not until necessity made farmers adven- 

 turous, and facilities of communication rendered one district conversant with 

 the doings of another, that they grew into general use. Whatever, therefore, 

 might have been eflfected on particular estates, the condition of English agri- 

 culture at the close of the eighteenth century nearly resembled that of the 

 greater part of continental Europe at the present time. Wheat in many dis- 

 tricts was rarely cultivated and rarely eaten by the laboring classes. Rye, 

 oats, and barley were the prevailing crops : a naked fallow, that is to say, a 

 year of barrenness, which was too often a year of exhausting weeds, was the 

 ordinary expedient fur restoring the fertility of soil. Farm-yard dung, ex- 

 posed to the dissolving influence of rain, and carelessly applied, was almost 

 the only manure. Artificial grasses, with beans, peas and cabbages, were 

 rarely grown, and turnips were confined to a few counties, where they we're 

 sown broadcast. Cultivation (except plowing and harrowing) was performed 

 almost entirely by manual labor ; the rude implements were usually con- 

 structed on the farm, and often in a way to increase labor instead of to econ- 

 omize it. The cattle were chiefly valued for their dairy qualities or for their 

 powers of draught, and were only fatted when they would milk or draw no 

 longer. The greater number of breeds were large boned and ill shaped, greedy 

 eaters, and slow in arriving at maturity ; while as very little winter food, 

 except hay, was raised, the meat laid on by grass in the summer was lost, or 

 barely maintained, in winter, Fresh meat for six months of the year was a 

 luxury only enjoyed by the wealthiest personages. Within the recollection 

 of many now living, first class farmers in Herefordshire salted down an old 

 cow in the autumn, which, with flitches of fat bacon, supplied their families 

 ■with meat until the spring. Esquire Bedel Gunning, in his " Memorials of 

 Cambridge," relates that, when Dr. Makepeace Thackeray settled in Chester 

 about the beginning of the present century, he presented one of his tenants 

 with a bull-calf of a superior breed. On his inquiring after it in the follow- 

 ing spring, the farmer gratefully replied, " Sir, he was a noble animal ; we 

 killed him at Christmas, and have lived upon him ever since," 



The reclaiming wild sheep walks, an improvement in the breeds of live 

 stock, an increase in the quantity of food grown on arable land for their sup- 

 port and a better rotation of crops, are the events which distinguish the 

 progress of English agriculture during the last century. The next step, after 

 some advance had been made, was to break down the barriers which separated 

 the farmers of that day, and which left them nearly as ignorant of what was 

 going on in every district besides their own as of what was passing in China 

 or Japan. The active agent in this work was the son of a prebendary of 

 Canterbury — the well known Arthur Young, one of the most useful and saga- 

 cious, if not one of the most brilliant of men. Within the last twenty years, 

 railways, the penny postage, and a cloud of newspapers have rendered per- 

 sonal and written communication universal. Let a superior animal be bred, 

 an ingenious machine invented, or a new kind of manure be discovered, and 

 in a few days the particulars are circulated through the press round the 

 whole kingdom, and bring visitors or letters of inquiry from every quarter. 

 But in the time of Arthur Young the most advanced counties communicated 

 with the metropolis and each other by thoroughfares which could hardly be 

 traversed except by a well mounted horseman or a broad wheeled waggon 

 drawn by twelve horses, while as " not one farmer in five thousand read any 

 thing at all," the printing press could not supply the place of personal inspec- 

 tion. Norfolk, with a subsoil which allowed the rain to filter through, 



