Me/no?/- o/* Arthur Young, Esq. 293 



wonder and astonishment, and have opened to his view a 

 fresh train of active research : he had often expressed to his 

 friends the surprise with which he witnessed the address of 

 Priestley, in collecting, transferring, and examining airs ; and, 

 upon being asked one day in what experiments he had been 

 engaged, his answer shews how strong an impression the 

 command which had thus been acquired over invisible ele- 

 ments had produced upon him ; and it affords, at the same 

 time, no bad specimen of his terse and humorous style of 

 expression : — " I have been engaged in examining airs, to be 

 sure, — I have been washing fixed air, and hanging it out to 

 dry." In 1782, we find him busily engaged with a curious 

 controversy with Mr. Capel Lofft, upon the propriety of the 

 county of Suffolk building and presenting the government 

 with a 74 gun ship : the letters were printed in the " Bury 

 Post^' and were the means of establishing that newspaper in 

 the public estimation. At about this period, Prince Potemkin, 

 the Russian prime minister, sent three young Russians to be 

 instructed by Mr. Young in the arts of husbandry ; and, in the 

 following year, the Empress Catharine presented him, through 

 the hands of her Embassador, with a magnificent gold snuff- 

 box, together with two rich ermine cloaks, designed as gifts 

 to his wife and daughter. 



In 1784, he commenced the publication of his " Annals of 

 Agriculture," in which he appeared in the double capacity of 

 editor and author, a work which he continued to the period of 

 his blindness : it extends to forty-five volumes, octavo, and 

 presents a vast store of information upon subjects of agriculture 

 and political oeconomy. The plan upon which it was conducted 

 was one which ought to have ensured for it more extensive and 

 profitable patronage, for, instead of recording anonymous 

 correspondence, it refused admittance to any paper that had 

 not the name and address of its author ; it can accordingly 

 boast of communications from the most exalted and enlightened 

 characters in Europe, at the head of whom stands our late 

 most gracious Sovereign, who transmitted to Mr; Young for 

 publication, an account of the farm of Mr. Ducket the able 



