ISOLATION OF VILLAGES 133 



interchanged. Visits were seldom paid. The only form in which 



information could be disseminated was in books or pamphlets, and 



in remote villages buyers were few or none. Newspapers had 



hardly begun to exist. The first attempt to found a scientific 



agricultural paper was made by John Houghton, whose Collection 



of Letters for the Improvement of Husbandry and Trade appeared 



in a weekly series from 1681 to 1683, and again from 1692 



to 1703. It is improbable that the circulation could have been 



extensive even among the wealthiest of the country gentry. 



Rumours of the progress of the outside world scarcely penetrated 



to distant villages. Farmers of one district knew Httle more of 



the practices of the next than they did of those of Kamchatka. 



Beyond the limited range of their horizon, their neighbours were 



only 



" Anthropophagi, and men whose heads 

 Do grow beneath their shoulders." 



In this extreme isolation must be sought a fruitful cause for the 

 slow diffusion of agricultural improvements. Another cause lay 

 in the absence of any strong incentive to raise more produce from 

 the soil than was requisite for the immediate wants of the producers. 

 Markets were, in many parts of England, not only difficult of access 

 but few in number. From vast and crowded haunts of labour 

 and trade the cry of the artisan had not yet arisen for bread and 

 meat. As soon as the farmer had satisfied the needs of himself, 

 his family, and his rent, his work was done. Till a wider demand 

 for agricultural produce had been created by the rapid growth of 

 population which resulted from the development of manufacturing 

 industries, and till the new markets had been brought to the 

 farmer's door by improved means of communication, the supply 

 was mainly regulated by the wants of the producer himself. 



Another cause for the neglect of improvements has been already 

 mentioned. A contempt for book-farmers, which was not wholly 

 unjustifiable, partially explains the slow adoption of new methods 

 and new crops. Of this class of agricultural writers, Thomas 

 Tryon affords an interesting example. Like most men of his kind, 

 he was a " Jack of all trades." He was a voluminous writer on a 

 miscellaneous variety of subjects — against drinking brandy and 

 " smoaking tobacco," upon brewing ale and beer, upon medical 

 topics, upon dreams and visions, on the benefit of clean beds, on 

 the generation of bugs, on the pain in the teeth. He also com- 



