1 88 A GRIC UL TURA L WRITERS. 



arrived at some conclusions not justified by his experiments, and among 

 these errors was the opinion that hoeing and pulverising the soil might 

 supersede the use of manure altogether ; but he lived to see his mistake, 

 and, what is still more worthy, to acknowledge it. 



He first of all settled down on a paternal farm at Crowmarsh, near 

 Wallingford, but gave this up after a few years and went abroad. Upon 

 returning to England, he occupied his own farm of Prosperous at 

 Shalborne, in Wiltshire, and commenced that warfare to win success 

 against adverse circumstances which only ceased with his death. The 

 tradition of his neighbourhood is that when confined to his couch by 

 incurable maladies he carried on his experiments in boxes placed before 

 his windows, sowing his seed and trying his surface-stirring processes 

 with all the enthusiasm of an inventer. He shared the fate of all those 

 who, as discoverers, have the temerity to disturb old systems. He was 

 ridiculed, thwarted, and opposed in every way even by those who ought 

 to have known better, and although his neighbours pronounced him a 

 lunatic, everything one can find connected with the history of this great 

 benefactor to agriculture is to-day of the greatest interest to the farmers 

 of this and all other countries. His horse-hoe system taught the farmer 

 that deep ploughing and pulverisation of the soil render a much smaller 

 application of fertilisers necessary, and his drill has saved in seed alone 

 the food of millions. 



Certam chapters of his only book that I am aquainted with, " The 

 Horse-hoe Husbandry," were published in quarto in 1731, the chief 

 volume in 1733, in folio, and in the same year some additions were 

 prmted which are not found in many of the copies of that year, 

 or even in that of later ones. Cobbett, however, was careful to 

 add it to an octavo edition, which he printed in 1829. In this 

 he omitted only the plates of the ploughs and other agricultural 

 implements, but he added an introduction, in which he eulogises 

 Tull and vituperates those who had adopted Tull's plans without 

 acknowledging the source of their obligation, not remembering 

 that many a TuUian improvement has often been made, since our 

 author's time, by plain, practical farmers who never even heard the 

 name of Tull mentioned. As before stated, Tull published an addenda 

 to his husbandry in the same year that the first large edition appeared — 

 1733. In this he takes more notice than was perhaps necessary of 

 certain attacks which had been made upon his book by the members of 

 a certain " equivocal society," amongst whom was the celebrated 

 Stephen Switzer, the most talented seedsman, gardener, and horti- 

 cultural author of the days. It appears, too, that a society of gentlemen 

 in Dublin had, without his leave, reprinted for distribution his "specimen 

 chapters," all of which annoying circumstances evidently irritated him. 

 Besides these controversial notices, the long addenda does not contain 

 anything very valuable. Time has settled pretty well the respective 



