PROGRESS OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 227 



ham, with his usual acuteness, had long before invited the attention of Sir 

 Humphry Davy to the chemisty of Agriculture, and even especially retained 

 a Mr. Grisewood'a services for Norfolii ; but the public were not yet ripe for 

 instruction, and the lever of superphosphate of lime and guano was wanting 

 to move their minds from traditionary routine. From that period the work 

 went on with railroad celerity. When Mr. Josiah Parkes called on Mr. Hand- 

 ley in 1837, he found him experimenting on " a new manure called guano."' 

 Ten years later, although the consumption was enormous, many farmers looked 

 upon its use as a sort of treason, and met innovators with a maxim, which is 

 in one sense sound : " Nothing like muck." Others equally ignorant, but 

 more enterprising, used it freely, and grew great crops without caring to know 

 the reason why. The desire to ascertain the reason why quickly followed, 

 and has already converted many a farmer into a creature of reason from a 

 creature of rule of-thumb. 



If it be asked- what has been practically gained within the last twenty years 

 by the investigations of the agricultural chemist, we would answer, certairUij. 

 We knew years ago that farmyard manure was excellent ; by the light of 

 chemical science we learn why it is " perfect universal manure," we learn 

 how to manuhicture and employ it best, and we learn why on clay soils it may 

 be safely, nay advantageously, left for weeks on the surface before being plowed 

 in. Chemical science again teaches us why lime, which is not an active man- 

 ure, although valuable as a destroyer of elements hostile to fertility, produces 

 great effect for a series of years, and then not unfruquently ceases to show any 

 profitable results ; it teaches us to what crops guano, to what superphosphate 

 of lime, to what farmyard manure may be most profitably applied, and when 

 a mixture of all three'. Chemistry settles the comparative value of linseed 

 cake, cotton cake, and karob beans ; shows when pulse should be used for fat- 

 tening pigs, and how to compound a mixture of Indian corn and bean meal 

 which shall fat bacon neither hard nor wasteful. The conclusions of science 

 were previously known empirically to a few, but their range was limited and 

 their application accidental. They have been reduced to order and rendered 

 universally available for the use of plain farmers by the investigations of men 

 like Lawes and Voelcker. As the latter observes, " there are too many modi- 

 fying influences of soil, climate, season, &c., to enable us to establish any 

 invariable laws for the guidance of the husbandman ;" but the more we can 

 trace effects to their causes and ascertain the mode in which nature operates, 

 the nearer we are to fixed principles and a sure rule of practice. 



It would seem, then, that the first great epoch of modern agricultural im- 

 provement began with Lord Townshond, who demonstrated the truth embodied 



in the adage, 



" He who marls sand 

 May buy the land," 



showed the value of the turnip, and, as we presume, must have been a patron 

 of the four-course system, which had its rise in Norfolk about the same time. 

 The second epoch was that of Bakewell, whose principles of stock-breeding 

 have ever since continued to raise, year by year, the average value of our 

 meat-producing animals. The third epoch dates from the exertions of such 

 men as the Duke of Bedford and Coke of Holkham, the latter of wliom, com- 

 bining usages which had been very partially acted upon, brought into favor 

 drilled turnip husbandry, carried all the branches of farming as far as was 

 permitted by the knowledge of his time, and did the inestimable service of 

 inoculating hundreds of landlords and tenants with his own views. The fourth 

 epoch, if we were to take each advance from its earliest dawn, would com- 

 prise the various dates of the opening of the first railroad, the importation of 

 the first cargo of guano, the publication of Liebig's first edition of the " Chem- 

 istry of Agriculture," and the deep draming of the Bonesetter's field on Chat 

 Moss ; but in general terras it may be said to date from the first meeting of 

 the Royal Agricultural Society at Oxford in 1839, when farmers began to be 



