ANCIENT AGRICULTURAL LITERATURE. 193 



But these flattering prospects were destined to be mate- 

 rially abated. Turnips missed, land was clover-sick : in 

 short, Nature had not changed, and land, severely cropped, 

 was exhausted. Now rotations are at a discount, and the 

 jargon about improving crops which Columella despised 

 eighteen hundred years ago has ceased ; and high manur- 

 ing, in one form or other, possesses the agricultural mind. 

 No instructor has a chance of a hearing unless he professes 

 to teach the farmer how he can restore to the earth the 

 nitrogen, or ammonia, or some mysterious element which 

 every one admits to have been carried off to the mill, the 

 malt-house, and the shambles. Why all this outcry about 

 draining? Mainly because draining is a necessary pre- 

 liminary to successful manuring. When land is surcharged 

 with water, and runs the rain off its surface, one portion of 

 the manure which is applied to it is rendered effete by wet 

 and cold, and another portion is swum away ; but if land 

 be porous by nature, or is rendered porous by art, every 

 particle and every element of the manure is available for 

 reproduction. The counties of Norfolk and Lincoln pro- 

 duce tenant farmers who manure, not like the Romans, 

 once in six years, but for every crop. Every schemer in 

 agriculture professes to have a plan by which we shall 

 drive foreigners from our markets by the mere exuberance 

 of our domestic production. Some of all this may be 

 absurd, some exaggerated, but it shows the bent of the 

 national mind. Whenever the history of British agricul- 

 ture is faithfully written, it will tell, not of a tame acqui- 

 escence in diminishing produce, not of the helpless iteration 

 of a worn-out course, but of constant improvement. It 

 may be truly said of the Roman agriculturist, that he 

 farmed as his fathers did before him ; but of no class of 

 men could it be said less truly than of the British. Who 

 among us would found his practice on an authority fifty 

 years old ? 



It would be very easy nay, it is daily practice to write 

 a description of British agriculture founded on undoubted 



