Book II. AGRICULTURE CONSIDERED AS A SCIENCE. 207 



implements, and their food for the day ; they work till near mid-day, and then refresh 

 themselves, and repose under a tree, or in winter under a temporary shed ; at night they 

 return, meet their neighbours, make a protracted supper, and amuse themselves in fiddling 

 and dancing, till they have exhausted their superfluous spirits. 



1249. The agriculture of the world in regard to the state of society may perhaps admit of 

 the following divisions. 



1250. The agriculture of science y or modern farming, in which the cultivator is secure 

 in his property or possession, both relatively to the government and landlord under which 

 he lives, as generally in Britain and North America. 



1 25 1 . The agriculture of habit, or feudal culture, in which the cultivator is a metayer, or 

 a tenant at will, or on a short lease, or has covenanted to pursue a certain fixed system of 

 culture. 



1 252. Barbarian agriculture., or that of a semi-barbarous people who cultivate at ran- 

 dom, and on land to which they have no defined right of possession, roots or grain 

 without regard to rotation, order, or permanent advantage. 



1 253. The economy of savages^ such as hunting, fishing, gathering fruits, or digging 

 up roots. 



Chap. IV. 

 Of the Agriculture of Britain* 



1 254. To which of these geographical, physical, and social divisions of agriculture that of 

 the Bi-itish isles may be referred, is the next object to be determined, and we submit the 

 following as its classification. 



1 255. Geographically it is the agriculture of draining and manures. 



1256. Physically, tliose of water-fed and sun-burnt lands, mountains, and variable 

 plains. 



1 257. Socially considered, it is the agriculture of science, 



1258. The following parts of this work, therefore, are to be considered as treating of a 

 kind of agriculture so characterized ; that is, of the agriculture of our own country. Who- 

 ever has paid a due attention to what has preceded, can scarcely fail to have formed an idea 

 of the agriculture of every other part of the world, suflScient to enable him to determine 

 that very little in our art is to be learned any where else than among ourselves. 



PART 11. 



AGRICULTURE CONSIDERED AS A SCIENCE. 



1 259. All knowledge is founded on exj^erience ; in the infancy of any art, experience 

 is confined and knowledge limited to a few particulars ; but as arts are improved and 

 extended a great number of facts become known, and the generalization of these, or the 

 arrangement of them according to some leading principle, constitutes the theory, science, 

 or law of an art. 



1260. Agriculture, in common with other arts, may be practised without any knowledge 

 of its theory ; that is, established practices may be imitated ; but in this case it must ever 

 remain stationary. The mere routine practitioner cannot advance beyond the limits of 

 his own particular experience, and can neither derive instruction from such accidents as 

 are favorable to his object, nor guard against the re-occurence of such as are unfavorable. 

 He can have no resource for unforeseen events but ordinary expedients ; while the man 

 of science resorts to general principles, refers events to their true causes, and adapts his 

 measures to meet every case. 



1261. The object of the art of agriculture is to increase the quantity and improve the 

 quality of such vegetable and animal productions of the earth as are used by civilized 

 man ; and the object of the agriculturist is to do this with the least expenditure of means ; 

 or, in other words, with profit. The result of the experience of mankind as to other ob- 

 jects may be conveyed to an enquiring mind in two different ways : he may be instructed 

 in the practical operations of the art, and their theory, or the reasons on which they are 

 founded, laid down and explained to him as he goes along ; or he may be first instructed 

 in genei-al principles, and then in the practices which flow from them. The former 



