170 JETHRO TULL AND LORD TOWNSHEND 



" practice would one day become the general husbandry of 

 England." 



The son of a Berkshire landowner, Jethro Tull was born at 

 Basildon in 1674. From Oxford, which he left without taking a 

 degree, he entered Gray's Inn as a law student, made the grand 

 tour of Europe, and was called to the Bar in 1699. Scholar, 

 musician, traveller, lawyer, he became a farmer not by choice but 

 from necessity. In 1699 he settled down with his newly married 

 wife at " Howberry " Farm 1 in the parish of Crowmarsh, near 

 Wallingford. There he lived ten years. In 1709 he moved to Mount 

 Prosperous, a hill-farm in the parish of Shalbourn, on the borders 

 of Berkshire and Wiltshire. Two years later, the failure of his health 

 drove him abroad to save his life. Returning in 1714 to Mount 

 Prosperous, he remained there till his death in 1740, living in a house, 

 covered with home-made glazed tiles, which Arthur Young, who 

 visited the place fifty years later, described as a " wretched hovel." 



At Crowmarsh Tull invented his drill. As a gentleman -farmer 

 he found himself at the mercy of his farm-servants. From his own 

 experience he verified the truth of the saying : 



" He who by the plough would thrive 

 Must either hold himself or drive." 



He determined to plant his whole farm with sainfoin. But " seed 

 was scarce, dear and bad, and enough could scarce be got to sow, 

 as was usual, seven bushels to the acre." He set himself to conquer 

 the difficulty. By constant observation and experiment he learned 

 the difference between good and bad seed, as well as the advantages 

 of care in selection, of cleaning, steeping, and change ; he also proved 

 that a thin sowing produced the thickest crop, and discovered the 

 exact depth at which the seed throve best. " So," he says, " I 

 caused channels to be made, and sowed a very small proportion of 

 seed, covered exactly. This was a great success." But it was also 

 an innovation, and his labourers struck in a body. Tull refused to 

 be beaten. He set his inventive faculty to work " to contrive an 

 engine to plant sainfoin more faithfully than hands would do." 

 His knowledge of the mechanism of an organ stood him in good 

 stead. The groove, tongue, and spring of the sounding board 

 suggested the idea of an implement which delivered the seed 

 through notched barrels. Behind was attached a bush harrow 



1 It is remarkable that this farm now (1912) contains one of the most 

 highly cultivated pieces of land in the world. 



