Amateur Farming. 327 



Young's Annals of Agriculture^ " turnips had forced their way 

 at once to the unspeakable benefit of the whole kingdom." 

 The reason for this was that the Comptroller General at the 

 time happened to have been a farmer, and whilst exercising the 

 duties of an official post in Flanders, had made careful observa- 

 tions on the Flemish turnip culture. On his return home he 

 convened a council at Paris, " composed for the most part of 

 those reverend seigneurs the Academicians, who seek to guide 

 this work-a-day world from their closets." Fortunately, how- 

 ever, the Comptroller General recognised two facts : first, that 

 the culture of turnips was not a subject suited to vulgar minds, 

 and secondly, that the knowledge of it was not exclusively the 

 property of the most learned. A gentleman of practice and 

 travelled experience had sent in a treatise on the management 

 of turnips as practised in East Anglia, and though certain 

 members of the council scoffed at any information emanating 

 from non-Academical sources, the bulk of them, influenced by 

 the enthusiasm of their President, adopted this report, and 

 decided to forward it to the various Intendants of the pro- 

 vinces, whose office it was to instruct the farmers. These 

 being themselves practical husbandmen, were eventually able 

 to establish turnip culture throughout France.^ 



Here in England, however, no such disciplined organization 

 as this existed, and amateur farming was the only connecting 

 link between science and practice. But let us for one moment 

 consider what our account of the national husbandry would 

 have been without the instrumentality of the amateur. Ex- 

 cise all that has been said of Tull, Bakewell, and Young, and 

 imagine what progress would have been made without the 

 examples of Coke, Turnip Townshend and the Duke of Bed- 

 ford. 



The gentleman farmer was to the eighteenth century what 

 the E-oman had been to the British era, the monk to the 

 middle ages, and the Fleming to the Tudor period. "Writers 

 to the Board of Agriculture were advocating the establish- 

 ment by Government of model farms in every neighbourhood ; 



* Annals of Agriculture, vol. v. p. 4, etc. 



