i62 AGRICULTURAL WRITERS. 



only given to those who till the soil. Quintus Cincinnatus, he adds, was 

 working at his plough when news was brought to him that he was 

 created Dictator. 



There is a chapter on the multiplication of corn. The illustration 

 opposite is also taken from his book, and it is clear, if authentic, that 

 they had more prolific types of barley than are available to-day with all 

 our knowledge. He refers also to a wheat which grows as many as 

 thirty-two stalks, and ten ears on each of them. Each ear had thirty 

 grains, which made in all 320 ears, and 9600 grains produced from one 

 single seed corn. A chapter on nitre as the salt of fruitfulness, and its 

 virtues as being wonderful for the multiplication of vegetables and of 

 animals, is quite a learned discourse upon its value and uses from the 

 days of antiquity. 



Although his book does not contain any lengthy advice pertaining to 

 agriculture, the original writer, the Abbot de \'allemont, deserves a notice 

 in this volume as being one of the first to apply his kno\vledge of 

 chemistry practically to the cultivation of the soil. There was a time 

 when the farmer scoffed at such an application, and many were the wild 

 theories published by dabblers in science which practical cultivators 

 quoted in justification of their scoffs. In no department is the union of 

 practice with science more beneficial than in that of dealing with the 

 fertilitv of the soil. It exhibits in a light to the most obvious the 

 intimate connection of the sciences; the mechanism of our implements, 

 the physiology of our animals and plants, the chemistry of their food, 

 and the geology of our soils are all subjects upon which volumes have 

 been written since Dr. I^leetwood translated from the French the 

 book I am now discussing. 



In 1707 he published anonvmouslv his " Chronicon Pretiosum," a 

 book verv valuable for its research and general accuracv on the value 

 of money and the price of corn and other commodities for the previous 

 six centuries. The question had occurred whether the statutes of a 

 college making the possession of an estate of ;^5 per annum a bar to 

 the retention of a fellowship were to be interpreted literally or with 

 regard to the altered value of money. Fleetwood clearly makes good 

 the more liberal interpretation. 



