292 Memoir of Arthur Young, Esq. 



cultural Society, inscribed, " For his Services to the Public." 

 After the publication of his Irish Tour, in consequence of a 

 very liberal offer from Lord Kingsborough, he returned to 

 Ireland, in order to inspect and superintend his lordship's 

 estate, and he resided for two years in a house built for his 

 reception at Milchel's Town, in the county of Cork ; owing to 

 circumstances which it would be tiresome to detail, he did 

 not remain much longer than twelve months, and, in the year 

 1779, we find him again quietly settled at Bradfield, having 

 in vain endeavoured to gain his mother's approbation of a 

 plan which he projected, of emigrating to America ; from this 

 period, he gradually extended his scale of husbandry, and 

 with such animation did he enter into the details of his occu- 

 pation, as to perform the manual operation of ploughing him- 

 self. Physiologists have asserted, that the energies of the 

 mind are incompatible with the laborious exercise of the body, 

 and that they are operations whose activity bears an inverse 

 ratio with each other. Mr, Young may at least be adduced, 

 as affording an exception to this law ; for, at the same time 

 that he was thus exerting his physical strength in the occupa- 

 tions of his farm, we find that his mind was engaged in a 

 laborious chemical examination of various soils, and in re- 

 cording and comparing the results of numerous agricultural 

 experiments on the culture of potatoes, for which the Society 

 of Arts adjudged him their honorary gold medal. This was a 

 feature in the character of Mr. Young that always astonished 

 the agriculturists of France. In the preface to a translation 

 of his works, the author exclaims, " but this person who has 

 written so much, and so well, is a practical farmer !" Mr. Young 

 had become intimately acquainted with Dr. Priestley, at Lord 

 Shelburne's, and had acquired from him a taste for pneumatic 

 chemistry. To a man who had been accustomed to contem- 

 plate only the grosser forms of matter, and to consider the 

 phaenomena of soils, as alone depending upon their texture 

 and density, it is not astonishing that his introduction by 

 Dr. Priestley to a new aerial creation, should have excited his 



