I go AGRICULTURAL WRTTERS. 



merits of the contending parties. The fame of Tull has steadily 

 increased, while the name and works of the classical Switzer are too little 

 known amongst modern cultivators. 



Jethro Tull died in 1740, and was buried at Basildon, in Berkshire. 

 Like many more exponents of fresh ideas who came before their time, the 

 value of his work remained unacknowledged until many years after his 

 death, this is the more surprising because his son, John Tull, was a 

 writer and a man of enterprise, to whom England was indebted for the 

 first introduction of post-chaises and the establishment of fish markets 

 in London. The best account of his life, times, and teachings is that by 

 Earl Cathcart."^ 



It was only about thirty years after the death of Jethro Tull that 

 Arthur Young arose as the great apostle of mixed agriculture. What he 

 taught was that in English farming grazing w^as of primary, and arable 

 management of only secondary, importance. Still, he was fully impressed 

 that the proportioned farm, of all others, was the most profitable, and that 

 in the origin of the four-field system, not acreage, but relative produce, 

 was to form the basis of apportionment in order to maintain that cardinal 

 requisite — the equilibrium of summer and winter provender. Even in 

 his enlightened days he was not above the prejudices that prevailed 

 generally against the new husbandry, as Tull's system came to be called, 

 and he prophesied many things ; but he lived long enough to see cause for 

 retracting most of his objections, and I consider he would be a clever 

 man who could contradict the fact that Jethro Tull was the originator of 

 the first English drill-sowing machine for use with corn or fallow crops, 

 and that kind of interculture peculiar to the fallow crops, and that his 

 principles have not been introduced into the practice of every enlightened 

 farmer in Great Britain, and as Arthur Young himself says in his 

 " Annals of Agriculture, "t " He has left a name in the world which 

 probably will last as long as the globe we inhabit.'" 



ARTHUR YOUNG. 



1741-1820. 



On September iith, 1741, was born Arthur Young, of whose writings 

 it has been justly said, that " they produced more private losses 

 and more public benefit than those of any other author." Thev 

 occasioned those losses by tempting the unpractised to become farmers, 

 and the farmers to try unprofitable experiments ; and they occasioned 



* See Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society, March, 1891. 

 t Vol. XXIIL, p. 172. 



