AN INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATOR 169 



their rents, of the small gentry forced to sell their estates, of land- 

 lords compelled by loss of income to curtail their establishments. 

 As yet there was no scarcity caused by population outstripping pro- 

 duction, no increased demand for food supplies from great industrial 

 centres. But without these spurs to farming progress, preparations 

 for advance were being made, and far-reaching improvements in 

 the cultivation of arable land had been already tested or initiated 

 by men like Jethro Tull and Lord Townshend. 



In the progress of scientific farming Tull is one of the most 

 remarkable of pioneers. His method of drilling wheat and roots 

 in rows was not generally adopted till many years after his death. 

 But the main principles which he laid down in his Horse-Hoeing 

 Husbandry (1733) proved to be the principles on which was based 

 an agricultural revolution in tillage. The " greatest individual 

 improver " that British agriculture had ever known, he sought to 

 discover scientific reasons for observed results of particular practices. 

 He was thus led to strike out for himself new and independent lines 

 of investigation. The chemistry of plant-life was in its infancy, 

 the science of vegetable physiology an almost untrodden field of 

 knowledge. Into these comparatively unexplored regions Tull 

 advanced alone, and, by minute observation of nature and stubborn 

 tenacity of purpose, he advanced far. Considering his difficulties 

 and disadvantages, it is a remarkable proof of his real genius that 

 he should have discovered so much. He lived in a solitary farm- 

 house, remote from such scientific aid as the age afforded, or from 

 friends in whom he could confide. His microscope was " very 

 ordinary " ; his appliances were self-made ; his experiments 

 thought out for himself. He made his observations and notes, 

 tortured by the " stone, and other diseases as incurable and almost 

 as cruel." His labourers, by whom he was, metaphorically, 

 " insulted, assaulted, kicked, cuffed and bridewelled," tried his 

 patience beyond endurance. His son turned out an extravagant 

 spendthrift who ended his days in the Fleet Prison. Ill-health and 

 misfortune made him irritable. His sensitive nature was galled 

 alike by the venomous criticism of the book, 1 in which he published 

 the results of his thirty years' experience as a farmer, and by its 

 shameless plagiarism. Yet he never lost his confidence that his 



1 The new Horse-Houghing Husbandry, 1731. (Five chapters of the sub- 

 sequent book which were pirated and re-printed in Ireland.) New Horse- 

 Hoing Husbandry, 1733. Supplement, 1740. William Cobbett edited and 

 published the Horse-Hoeing Husbandry in 1822 : 2nd edition, 1829. 



