TJlc Past, Present, and Fntnrc of Scottish Agriailtnre 



13 



tem of tillage we have referred to, and which 

 is at present authoritatively, or ^//^j-Z-authori- 

 tatively adopted, was there another mode of 

 tillage recommended. This was not exactly 

 invented— iox it Avas not new — but it may be 

 said to have been discovered and applied by 

 Jethro Tull — a man who was, and whose 

 name will be handed down to posterity as 

 one of the benefactors of mankind, as well 

 as one of the most unique geniuses of any age 

 or country. The origin of his scheme was 

 this : While on the Continent he had observed 

 the culture of the vine, and remarked that the 

 low vineyards were planted in such regular 

 order as to admit the agency of the plough 

 between the rows. No manuring was resorted 

 to, as the dung is said to spoil the taste of 

 the wine. " It was from this practice," he 

 explains, " I took my vineyard scheme, ob- 

 serving that indifferent land produces an 

 annual crop of grapes and wood without 

 dung; and though there is annually carried 

 off from an acre of vineyard as much in 

 substance as is carried off in the crop of an 

 acre of corn, produced on land of equal good- 

 ness, yet the vineyard soil is never im- 

 poverished unless the hoeing culture be de- 

 nied ; but a few annual crops of wheat with- 

 out dung, in the common management, will 

 impoverish and emaciate the soil." (" Horse- 

 Hoeing Husbandry," chap. 6, note.) 



Accordingly, Tull's mind ran at once into 

 the idea that earth was the food of the plant, 

 and that, therefore, continual stirring the soil 

 was all that was needed to produce that 

 food, by effecting always what he termed a 

 new " internal superfices." The " fine par- 

 ticles of the earth," says he, " are the very 

 pabulum on which the plant subsists," dung 

 simply serving the same end as the plough 

 in pulverizing the soil through its mechanical 

 and chemical properties. We give a very 

 brief sketch of this extraordinary man's 

 character by one who was well qualified to 

 judge : — "The drill-husbandry has been pro- 

 bably known and practised for ages, but was 

 first essayed upon a regular and permanent 

 plan by the learned Jethro Tull, who pro- 

 fessed to have caught the idea from the vine 

 culture upon the Continent. In the course 



of thirty years' culture of his own grounds, 

 under every disadvantage of ruined health and 

 embarrassed circumstances, did this enthusi- 

 astic and splenetic genius reduce the tillage, 

 seeding, and weeding of land to a system, 

 which, being founded in nature and philosophi- 

 cal truth, we may venture to predict no length 

 of time will be able to overturn. Most of 

 our drilling and hoeing implements are either 

 copies or improvements upon the invention 

 of Tull ; and his book, in which theory and 

 practice are properly blended, evincing the 

 labour of an acute and penetrating mind, 

 ought to be in the hands of every agriculturist 

 who aims at principles, and who is laudably 

 ambitious to take his draught of science at 

 the fountain-head. The grand error of Tull 

 has not always been fairly or accurately stated. 

 He nowhere denies that dung is an improver 

 of land ; but with that inequality of reason- 

 ing, generally to be observed in men of strong 

 prejudices, he weakly attempts to support 

 the fanciful notion that dung acts merely by 

 dividing the soil, without being in any sort 

 the food of plants, which puality he attributes 

 exclusively to earth — as if dung, to go no 

 further, was not naturally and spontaneously 

 convertible to earth. It is extremely pro- 

 bable this notion of Tull was the pure 

 offspring of his spleen. But, whatever were 

 his defects, it would probably be difficult to 

 name a man whose works have conferred a 

 more solid and permanent benefit upon his 

 country ; yet, whilst so many others, for 

 services of a very different nature and ten- 

 dency, have enjoyed the most splendid 

 rewards, Jethro Tull, whose honest labours 

 were to contribute to the feeding and employ- 

 ment of countless millions, was suffered to 

 pine out his days in misery and distress : his 

 reward consists in the glory of being hailed by 

 posterity as the iUustrious father of horse-hoeing 

 husbandry." 



ConsideringTthat one erroneous maxim of 

 Tull was, " never to plough below the staple," 

 whereby he shut himself out from the subsoil, 

 and precluded the introduction of all new 

 matter for the nutriment of the plant, it is 

 astonishing how, without any application of 

 manure, he could have liad crops at all ; and 



