INTRODUCTION xxxvii 



which appeared during the Commonwealth, treats of the cultiva- 

 tion of clover, recommends turnips as a crop for feeding cattle, 

 and contains the first intimation as to the practice of alternate 

 cropping. After the Restoration agriculture remained stationary 

 for about eighty years. 



In the eighteenth century British agriculture was advanced by 

 the practice of Jethro lull, a gentleman of Berkshire, who began 

 to drill wheat and other crops about the year 1701, and whose 

 Horse-hoeing Husbandry was published in 1731. He was the 

 founder of the system of sowing crops in rows or drills in order to 

 admit of tillage between the ridges : turnips, potatoes, etc., being 

 cultivated on his system at the present time. After the time of 

 lull's publication no great alteration in British agriculture took 

 place till Robert Blakewell and others effected some improve- 

 ment in the breed of cattle, sheep, and swine. To Blakewell we 

 owe the well-known breed of Leicester sheep. By the end of the 

 eighteenth century it was a common practice to alternate green 

 crops with grain crops, instead of exhausting the land and inviting 

 diseases with a number of successive crops of corn. 



In 1754 complaints were made by country gentlemen of the 

 old laws not being sufficient for the preservation of game, poaching 

 being greatly on the increase. During the session a new Game 

 Act was passed through both Houses of Parliament, but it only 

 served to crowd the jails with unqualified sportsmen, who there 

 became qualified for the commission of much more serious offences. 

 The Game Laws, a relic of the old Forest Laws, required a certain 

 qualification to enable any one to pursue and kill game. In the 

 time of James I, the qualifications were 40 a year from land, or 

 200 in personal property. In the time of Charles II the quali- 

 fications were altered to the possession of an estate of inheritance 

 worth 100 per annum, or of a leasehold estate for life, or for ninety 

 years or upwards, worth 150 per annum. By the Act 25 George 

 III, cap. i, it was made incumbent on qualified persons, in order 

 to give them the full right of killing game, to take out a game 

 certificate, that is, to pay a tax for the privilege. 



Agriculture received a great impetus to improvement during 

 the wars caused by the French Revolution, 1795-1814, through 

 the high price of agricultural produce, not only in England but 

 also in Scotland. One effect of the high price of agricultural 

 produce was to increase the products of the soil and the rental 

 of the land ; the latter in some cases more than doubled during 

 the latter half of the eighteenth century. Societies for the ad- 

 vancement of agriculture were founded in both England and 

 Scotland, and one result of the improvement in agricultural 

 pursuits was a relative increase of four-footed and winged game. 

 Poaching was correspondingly greater, and carried on with 

 the connivance of tenants smarting under higher rents and 



