108 CAUSES OF THE DECLINE 



(Five Hundred Points of Husbandry) and of Fitzherbert. 

 From that time forward we can trace a steady development 

 of theory. In the seventeenth century, Leonard Mascall 

 (1605) treats of the more scientific ' government of cattel '. 

 John Norden writes his Surveyor's Dialogue, 1607. In 

 1610, Rowland Vaughan first draws attention to the value 

 of irrigation. In 1649, Walter Blith, in his English 

 Improver, points out the advantages of drainage. In 1650, 

 Sir R. Weston, formerly ambassador in the Palatinate, in 

 his ' Discourse of Husbandrie used in Brabant and Flanders', 

 advocates the use of clover and of turnips ; in the same 

 year Samuel Hartlib, the friend of Milton, advises the 

 folding of sheep after the Flanders manner. In 1669, 

 John Forster suggests the plantation of potatoes as a 

 remedy against all succeeding dear years. 



It is, however, when we pass to the eighteenth century 

 that the writers increase in number and in importance. Of 

 this school Jethro Tull, 1731, may be considered the father. 

 A native of Berkshire, though as so often the case a failure 

 as a practical farmer, he was a man of scientific attainments 

 and great originality. He not only taught the importance 

 of more extensive cultivation, but invented a variety of 

 agricultural implements, and from that time forward pam- 

 phlets and treatises too numerous to mention appear, until 

 they culminate in the works of A. Young. 



For a long time, however, the English farmer refused 

 to listen. The earlier writers sometimes suggested absurd 

 remedies. ' Take/ says Hartlib or his editor, ' serpents or, 

 which is best, vipers ; cut their heads and tayles off and dry 

 the rest to powder. Mingle this powder with salt, and give 

 a few grains to sheep who have the flukes.' Many of the 

 reforms urged upon the farmer were on foreign models, and 



1 Cf. Prothero, Pioneers and progress of English Farming, pp. 29, 

 248. 



I 



