172 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND 



yard manure kept the land friable ; but it also stimulated the 

 growth of weeds. The better course, therefore, was to keep the 

 land pulverised by tillage and so to prevent the contraction of 

 the food area of the growing crops. So long as wheat and turnips 

 were sown broadcast, this method could not be satisfactorily 

 employed. But if they were drilled in rows, divided by sufficiently 

 wide intervals, the principles of vine culture could be profitably 

 appHed. In two ways the crops benefited by constant tillage. 

 In the first place, the land was kept clean from weeds, and so saved 

 from exhaustion. In the second place, tHe repeated pulverisation 

 of the soil admitted air, rain-water, and dews to the roots of the 

 plants, and extended the range from which their lateral growths 

 drew their food suppKes. In some respects TuU's system failed. 

 His rows of thinly sown wheat, for instance, were drilled so far 

 apart that the plants were slow to mature, and therefore, if sown late 

 in the year, were more susceptible to bhght. But for turnips his 

 method was admirable. Incidentally also he found that his " drill 

 husbandry " was a substitute not only for fallows, but for farm- 

 yard dung, which he dreaded as a weed-carrier. Without fallows or 

 manure, he grew on the same land, by constant tillage, for thirteen 

 years in succession heavier wheat crops, from one-third of the 

 quantity of seed, than his neighbours could produce by following 

 the accepted routine. By this discovery he anticipated one of the 

 most startHng results of the Rothamsted experiments. 



The chief legacies which Jethro Tull left to his successors were 

 V ■( ^-^^^^ farming, economy m seedings, driUing, and the max^im that 

 ^ / 1 'the more the irons are among the roots the better for the crop. 

 It was along these lines that agriculture advanced. On open- 

 field farmers who sowed their seed broadcast, thickly, and at 

 varying depths, Tull's experiments were lost. Equally fruitless, 

 so far as his immediate neighbours were concerned, was his demon- 

 stration of the value of sainfoin and turnips, or the driUing of 

 wheat and roots. Even his system of drilHng roots was neglected 

 in England, till it had been tested and adopted in Scotland. 



It was not till TuU's principles were put m practice by large 

 landlords in various parts of the country that their full advantages 

 became apparent. In England this was the work of men Hke Lord 

 Townshend at Raynham in Norfolk, Lord Ducie at Woodchester 

 in Gloucestershire, or Lord Hahfax at Abbs Court near Walton- 

 on-Thames. In Scotland the " TuUian system " was enthusiasti- 



