SHORTCOMINGS OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 21 



given in the 'fifties of the past century, the driving force 

 of which — very potent force it was — once more came from 

 our shores : this time not from England alone ; for at that 

 time Scotland, and more particularly the Lothians, received 

 their full meed of recognition on the other side of the North 

 Sea. There was still plenty of " three-field farming " in 

 Germany at the time, and terrible stinting alike of live 

 stock and of the soil — more than farmers in this country 

 would believe to be possible.^ It was really Chemistry — 

 the despised science of British farmers even in the august 

 quarters of the Agricultural Organisation Society, but 

 that same ' ' Chj^mistry ' ' of which some fifty years previ- 

 ously Francis Home had written in recognition of Humphry 

 Davy's memorable work, that " without a knowledge of 

 that science Agriculture could not be reduced to principles," 

 and which had under such leading raised British Agriculture 

 to its eminence of those days — which mainly served to 

 bring about the change. People in the main still swore 

 by " humus," which was Jethro Tull's " Mother Bountiful," 

 the worship of which Saussure had carried across to the 

 Continent. In 1840 Liebig, then a professor at the Univer- 

 sity of Giessen, but a professor not specifically of agricul- 

 tural chemistry, electrified the world by pressing upon 

 the public the importance of a supply of mineral fertilising 

 constituents. This new doctrine took the world by surprise 

 and subsequently by storm. By a curious coincidence the 

 very same year saw practically the first shipment of Peru- 

 vian guano arriving in Europe. Guano was already known 

 to the Incas, whose kings, appreciating its value, strictly 

 " protected " it by prohibiting export. Vega had explained 

 its fertilising properties at Lisbon in 1602. Thus in the 



^ Reading the chapter on Agriculture in the Georgian and early 

 Victorian days in Mr. Prothero's masterly " English Farming, Past 

 and Present," has vividly brought back to my memory what I 

 saw in Germany in the 'fifties and 'sixties. There was the old lumber- 

 ing plough, often with a wooden mould board, harrows still often 

 made of wood, wagons often with wooden axletrees, sowing by 

 hand, thrashing with the flail, " throwing " and winnowing by hand, 

 reaping and mowing with the scythe, binding sheaves with bands 

 of straw, aye, there were the old " clotting beetles " still in use for 

 breaking up clods of heavy clay. 



