14 



Fitzherbert's " Book of Husbandry," which was pub- 

 lished in 1634. Tusser's " Five Hundred Points of 

 Husbandry," appeared about thirty years after, and 

 was followed by Barnaby Googe's " Whole Art of 

 Husbandry," and " The Jewel Houses" of Sir Hugh 

 Piatt. Early in the eighteenth century, the cele- 

 brated treatise of Jethro Tull excited much attention, 

 and several new works of considerable consequence 

 were announced before 1764, when the valuable 

 publications of Arthur Young, Marshel, and of nu- 

 merous other authors, spread a knowledge of cultiva- 

 tion, and cherished a taste for rural improvements 

 throughout Great-Britain, which has rendered that 

 kingdom as distinguished for its tillage, as for its 

 advancement in manufactures and commercial enter- 

 prise. Agriculture has covered her barren heaths 

 with luxuriant crops, converted her pools and mo- 

 rasses into verdant meadows, and clothed her bleak 

 mountains with groves of forest trees, — while horti- 

 culture is rapidly extending her beneficent and glad- 

 some influence, from the palace to the cottage, and 

 adorning the precincts, or overspreading the entire 

 regions of her adventurous precursor. 



After the immortal Linnaeus published his " Sys- 

 tem of Nature," Botany became a popular science, 

 and its numerous votaries produced a variety of inter- 

 esting elementary works, which, with those of Mil- 

 ler, Wheatly, Abercrombie, Hepton, Price, Maddock, 

 Panty, Sang, Loudon, and Knight, — the British 

 Columella, — rapidly diffused intelligence among all 

 classes of society. A passion for experiment and 

 ornamental planting was thus induced, which give 



