74 AGRICULTURAL WRFFERS. 



How far, may I add, have we advanced in our ki-.owledge in the 

 subjugation of these fungoid diseases since the days of the writer, now 

 250 years ago? 



Here is evidentlv the first experiment in the method known as 

 alternate husbandry, or the sowing out of leys. On page 40 he says : 



I know a gentleman who at my entreaty sowed with liis oats, the bottome of his 

 hay-mow, and though his land were worne out of heart, and naturally poor, yet he had 

 that yeare not onlv a crop of oats, but he might, if it had pleased him, have mowen his 

 grasse also, but he spared it. which was well done, till the next year, that it might 

 make a Turffe and grow stronger. 



He also observes that the yellow or hop trefoil grew naturally in 

 Kent, and he speaks of three and twenty other sorts of trefoils. He 

 refers on page 78 to " the ignorance that prevails about the grasses 

 which naturally grow amongst us, and their uses, which likewise were 

 made for to be food for cattel, and also for the service of man," and lays 

 down lengthy rules for improving this want of knowledge. On page 89 

 he deplores the want of divers things which are necessary for the 

 accomplishment of agriculture, " that we have not a system, or a 

 compleat book on all the parts of agriculture,'' and he reckons all the 

 authors before him went on probabilities and hearsays rather than 

 experience. 



In his day the city of London comprised 600,000 people (it is now 

 over 4,000,000), 5000 quarters of wheat were wanted weekly, and he 

 advocates " storehouses for holding six months' supplies for the people, 

 likewise the same at York, Bristol, and Norwich, in case the magazines 

 beyond the seas are locked up from us." He gives divers experiments 

 wherein is shown how corn may be preserved in cheap years without cor- 

 ruption, so that it may supply the dearth when it cometh. He speaks of two 

 sorts of saintfoine, one which endures for four vears only, and the other 

 which stands twelve to fifteen years. Can this be what we know as 

 common and giant saintfoin ? 



Although made up of a mass of correspondence from many sources, 

 this work was evidently thought a deal of, as Cromwell* (in 1647), gave 

 Hartlib a pension of 1C100 per annum, afterwards increasing it to ;^30o, 

 to come out of Haberdashers' Hall.t In 1660 his pension was ^700 in 

 arrears, and in a letter to Lord Herbert he complains he had nothing 

 to keep him alive. 



On April gth, 1662, he presented a petition to the House of Commons 

 setting forth his services, and craving relief, in which he says inter 

 alia, 



that for thirty years and upwards he has exerted himself in procuring rare collections 

 of MSS. in all parts of learning, which he had freely imported, transcribed, and printed, 



* Jo. H. Com. 1644 — 1646, cp. I. Vol. IV. folio, pages 587, 588. 

 t Jo. H. Com. Vol. V. folio, pages 131-2-3. 



