12 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



ours, and to that extent her superiority has baffled our 

 measures of food-war by means of a blockade. How- 

 ever superior the best of our farming may be, as a nation 

 we shall have to admit that for the moment we are 

 beaten. 



That fact is bound to give rise to bitter reflection. 

 How are the mighty fallen ! Fifty and sixty years ago we 

 were the observed of all observers as leaders in Agriculture. 

 Great Britain was the farming Mecca for agriculturists to 

 journey to in quest of knowledge. It was we who had held 

 up the light of agricultural learning which had illuminated 

 the world. It was from us that France, Germany, Switzer- 

 land — every country of the Continent, in fact — had learnt 

 superior farming, as " Turnip Townshend," " Coke of Nor- 

 folk," Lord Somerville and their coetaneans and successors 

 had perfected and taught it. In France it was Saussure 

 who had acted as our apostle. The important Societe 

 Nationale d' Agriculture de France was set up in imitation of 

 the Agricultural Society of Dublin. In Switzerland the 

 chosen prophet of modern Agriculture, the founder — in 

 company with Pestalozzi — of the first farm-school, and in 

 this way the " father " of Agricultural Education as a 

 whole, Emmanuel von Fellenberg, had preached from 

 English texts, laying stress, more particularly, upon the 

 merits of our system of rotation. In Germany " Father 

 Thaer " — born, as a Hanoverian, a subject of King George 

 the Third— who is the reputed " father " of modern German 

 Agriculture, held up our Agriculture as the model to follow 

 — just as did many years after, in the same country, in 

 the period here spoken of — ^which was the German agricul- 

 tural rinascimento — Stockhardt and his fellow pioneers — 

 Stockhardt having learnt, as he himself owned, mainly 

 from Rothamsted. 



It is with our own weapons that the Germans have for 

 the time being vanquished us, with our own heifer that 

 they have been ploughing their field. The application is 

 theirs, past masters as they are in the art of borrowing and 

 adapting; the principle is ours. And what they have 

 grafted upon our native stock, it must be a comfort to 



