1 68 AGRICULTURAL WRULERS. 



imformation of which he most stood in need when first requiring^ 

 instruction. He begins at the beginning of every operation ; he tells his 

 readers every point about which care is essential, whereas the professional 

 thinks "everybody knows " all the initiatory practices, and passes on to 

 those which remain as difficulties. Nor is this the only defect usual in 

 the writings of a practical man. He is, for the most part, a man of facts ; 

 and in his directions he explains in the fewest possible words, which is 

 not always suitable for teaching the uninstructed. 



The Rev. John Laurence was the author of several books on gardening, 

 but the volume I am most interested in just now is that upon agriculture, 

 of which the title-page is represented on the opposite page. Facing this 

 in the book is a perspective view of His Royal Highness the then Prince 

 of Wales's house and grounds at Richmond, and other opening pages 

 contain an address to His Royal Highness, in which he extols the virtues 

 of the occupation of farming and gardening for giving ease and content- 

 ment to the mind. 



Chapters I. to IV. represent instructive lessons on the air, earth, fire, 

 and water. He was a strong advocate for the fallowing of land once in 

 three years, " because it kills the weeds, by turning up their roots to the 

 air. and if wild oats, darnel, or other noxious things show themselves 

 the repetition soon again destroys them also. It is a means to lay the 

 land in ridges, thereby better exposing it to receive the nitrous influence 

 of frost, wind, sun, and dews. These all tend to sweeten and mellow 

 the land." In the way of ordering a fallow, he considered it best not to 

 plough it, but to let it lie all the winter and to eat with sheep or other 

 cattle the green meat that grew thereon until April ; next stir it, and, at 

 the interval of a month, twy-fallow it. 



He gives a list of some twenty-two different sorts of clays in various 

 parts of the country, and marl he describes as the ointment of the earth. 

 He considered that wheat grains should be sown loin. apart; the plant 

 will then spread and tiller into many stalks. A bushel of good grain 

 should weigh 6olb. to 641b. — so that we have not to-day improved in this 

 direction. He states that three parts oatmeal and one part barley makes 

 a good bread, and a small pleasant ale was made of oats turned into 

 malt, of which King William was a great admirer. At Over, near 

 Cambridge, he tells us " they keep a middling sort of cow which they 

 dispose of at Michaelmas, and buy others that will calve each month of 

 the winter, that they may have butter enough to serve the colleges, and 

 this IS so good that the curious inquire for Over butter." The farmers 

 reckoned to obtain seven parts in butter from eighteen parts of new milk. 

 A good cow at Over gave twelve quarts of milk a day. In a chapter on 

 silkworms he gives the text of King James's command for the planting 

 of mulberry trees as a likely panacea for "preserving his people from 

 the shame and grief of penury, and increasing them to wealth and 



