234 History of the English Landed Interest. 



the costly Angelots of France, He maintained that we -were 

 negligent in our breeding of cattle, that we knew nothing of 

 the true worth of feeding stuffs and grasses, and that our 

 want of veterinary knowledge added considerably to the 

 death-rate of our livestock. 



Does it not strike the reader that in the foregoing brief 

 summary of Weston's requirements we possess certain shadowy 

 shapes of coming agricultural institutions ? Have we not in 

 embryo, for example, the modern agricultural journal in those 

 demands of his on literary talent ; or, in his request to practical 

 men, some national Society of Husbandry ; or, in his recollec- 

 tions of Roman usages, a central Board of Agriculture ; or, 

 lastly, in his ideas on agricultural education, the same incen- 

 tives which prompt the County Councils to send forth into the 

 highways and byways of our English Arcadia the peripatetic 

 lecturer on technical education ? 



The idea of a periodical publication as a general channel for 

 agricultural information almost immediately bore fruit ; for 

 Houghton, in 1681, published a paper for this purpose, and 

 induced such valued authorities as Worledge and Evelyn to 

 occasionally communicate their views to the public, through 

 the medium of his pages. Unfortunately it did not long sur- 

 vive the accession of Queen Anne, and though it was suc- 

 ceeded by other publications of a similar nature, they, being 

 edited anonymously, failed to attract, on the one hand, any 

 valuable literary talent, or, on the other, any public attention. 

 When such emulations of Houghton's Letters ^ as the Museum 

 Etisticam, the De Be Rustica, and the Foreign Essays had 

 ceased to exist, Dr, Hunter resuscitated the idea, and pub- 

 lished the four volumes of the Georgical Essays in his own 

 name. Attracted by his personal influence, valuable informa- 

 tion from well-known husbandmen flowed in ; but then the 



^ It is not to be supposed that the Collection for Improvement for 

 Ilushandry and Trade, came out on a certain day of the week and again 

 on a certain day of the month. The broadsheets were irreguhirly 

 periodical, and were disseminated by the carriers throughout the farm 

 homesteads of the eastern counties as soon after Houghton had issued 

 them as possible. 



