The Hitsbandry of the Period. 237 



their pockets. No wonder tlien, as Tull tells us himself, that 

 though he introduced turnips into the field in the reign of 

 King William, the practice did not travel beyond the 

 boundary hedges of his estate until after the peace of 

 Utrecht; and when he talked to his neighbours, all old- 

 fashioned tenant farmers, about the advantages of clover 

 cultivation, they told him they had to pay rents out of tlieir 

 profits of production, and that this circumstance left them no 

 margin for indulging in foolish experiments. 



It might have been supposed that Tull's neighbours would 

 have jumped at any process which offered them a substitute 

 for the expensive practice of bare-fallowing ; and no doubt 

 when he had got out of a single field a dozen or more 

 successful and consecutive wheat harvests, many would have 

 been tempted to give the new process a trial. It must, how- 

 ever, be realised that in Tull's system quite half the field lay 

 barren, even though the whole was employed in the cultiva- 

 tion of wheat; and that he therefore virtually combined in 

 one year's tillage of each close, the bare-fallow and the crop, 

 which the ordinary farmer divided into two distinct processes, 

 and took double the time to effect. 



The fundamental basis of Tull's method was to sow his seed 

 at such intervals that the hoes could work all round each plant 

 until it arrived at maturity. In the cultivation of wheat he 

 formed the land into six-feet ridges, on the middle of which 

 he drilled two rows of seed ten inches apart. But not only 

 ^Vere there intervals of ten inches between his rows, there were 

 also spaces or partitions (as he called them) between plant and 

 plant in the same row : the former he stirred with the horse 

 hoes, and the latter with the hand hoes. That space between 

 ridge and ridge which was unoccupied was practically his bare- 

 fallow, and only came into cultivation the succeeding year, 

 when the same kind of crop was again planted. Later on, 

 when he had obtained a long series of good cereal crops off the 

 same field, and found apparently no symptoms of exhausted 

 soil, he was not so particular about changing the situation 

 of his rows, but altered his ridges regardless of the lines of 

 stubble whicli marked the position of the recent crop. 



