Book F. AGRICULTURE IN THE BRITISH ISLES. 131 



Essays of Harte, canon of Windsor, in 1764. The celebrated Arthur Young's first 

 publication on agriculture, entitled, The Farmer s Letters to the People of England^ &c. 

 appeai-ed in 1767;, and was followed by a great variety of excellent works, including 

 the Tour in France, and the Annals of Agriculture, till his pamphlet on the utihty of 

 the Board of Agriculture, in 1810. Marshall's numerous and most superior 

 agricultural works commenced with his Minutes of Agriculture, published in 1787, and 

 ended with his Review of the Agricultural Reports, in 1816. The last works we shall 

 mention are those of Dr. R. W. Dickson, whose Practical Agriculture appeared in two 

 quarto volumes, in 1806, and may be considered as giving a complete view of the 

 present state of agriculture at the time. Other works have appeared subsequently. 

 In this sketch a great number of useful and ingenious authors are necessarily omitted ; 

 but tliey will all be found in their places in the Literature of British Agriculture, given 

 in the Fourth Part of this work. 



782. The Scottish writers on agriculture in that country confirm our view of the 

 low state of the art in the beginning of the eighteenth century The first work, 

 written by James Donaldson, was printed in 1697, under the title of Husbandry Anato- 

 mised ; or, an Enquiry into the present Manner of Teiling and Manuring the Qround 

 in Scotland. It appears from this treatise that the state of the art was not more advanced 

 at that time in North Britain, than it had been in England in the time of Fitzherbert. 

 Farms were divided into infield and outfield i corn crops followed one another, without 

 the intervention of fallow, cultivated herbage, or turnips, though sometliing is said 

 about fallowing the outfield ; enclosures were very rare ; the tenantry had not begun to 

 emerge from a state of great poverty and depression ; and the wages of labor, com- 

 pared with the price of corn, were much lower than at present ; though that price, at 

 least in ordinary years, must appear extremely moderate in our times. Leases for a term 

 of years, however, were not uncommon ; but the want of capital rendered it impossible 

 for the tenantry to attempt any spirited improvements. 



783. The Countrynmns Rudiments ; or, an Advice to the Farmers in East Lothian, 

 how to labor and improve their grounds, said to have been written by Lord Bel haven, 

 about the time of the union, and reprinted in 1723, is the next work on the husbandry 

 of Scotland. In this we have a deplorable picture of the state of agriculture, in what 

 is now the most highly improved county in Scotland. His lordship begins with a 

 very high encomium on his own performance. " I dare be bold to say, there never 

 was such a good, easy method of husbandry as this, so succinct, extensive, and me- 

 thodical in all its parts, published before." And he bespeaks the favor of those to 

 whom he addresses himself, by adding, " neither shall I aflfright you with hedging, 

 ditching, marling, chalking, paring and burning, draining, watering, and such like, 

 which are all very good improvements indeed, and very agreeable with the soil and 

 situation of East Lothian ; but I know ye cannot bear as yet such a crowd of improve- 

 ments, this being only intended to initiate you in the true method and principles of 

 husbandry." The farm lands in East Lotliian, as in other districts, were divided into 

 infield and outfield, the former of which got all the dung. * The infield, where 

 wheat is sown, is generally divided by the tenant into four divisions or breaks, as they 

 call them, viz. one of wheat, one of barley, one of peas, and one of oats ; so that the 

 wheat is sowed after the pease, the barley after the wheat, and the oats after the barley. 

 The outfield land is ordinarily made use of promiscuously for feeding their cows, horses, ' 

 sheep, and oxen : it is also dunged by their sheep, who lay in earthen folds ; and some- 

 times, when they have much of it, they fauch or fallow paxt of it yearly." Under 

 this management, the produce seems to have been three times the seed ; " and yet," says 

 his lordship, " if in East Lothian they did not get a higher stubble than in other places 

 of the kingdom, their grounds would be in a much worse condition than at present 

 they are, though bad enough. A good crop of corn makes a good stubble, and a good 

 stubble is the equallest mucking that is." Among the advantages of enclosures, he ob- 

 serves, " you will gain much more labor from your servants, a great part of whose 

 time was taken up in gathering thistles, and other garbage, for their horses to feed 

 upon in their stabks ; and thereby the great trampling and pulling up, and otlier de- 

 struction of the corns, while they are yet tender, will be prevented." Potatoes and 

 turnips are recommended to be sown in the yard (kitchen-garden). Clover does not 

 seem to have been known. Rents were paid in corn ; and, for the largest farm, M'hich 

 he thinks should employ no more than two ploughs, the rent was *' about six chalders 

 of victual, when the ground is very good, and four in that which is not so good. But 

 I am most fully convinced, they should take long leases or tacks, that they may not be 

 straitened with time in the improvement of their rooms (farms j ; and this is profitable 

 both for master and tenant." 



784. Maxwell's Select Transactions of the Society qf Improvers of the knowledge of Agriculture in 

 Scotland^ was published in 1743, (see 775.) and his Practical Husbatidman, in 1757, including an Essay on 

 the Husbandry of Scotland. In the latter he lays it down as a rule, that it is bad husbandry to take two 

 crops of grain successively, which marks a considerable progress in the knowledge of modem culture ; 



K 2 



