HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



unable to manage their estates. No doubt his scathing 

 remarks helped to initiate the well-known change in this 

 respect, and soon, over all England, gentlemen of education 

 and position were engaged in removing this reproach from 

 their class. The same complaint as to their ignorance of 

 matters connected with their land crops up again during the 

 great French war, but they then had a good excuse, as they 

 were busy fighting the French. 



Tull invented his drill about 1701 at Howberry. The first 

 occasion for making it, he says, was that it ' was very difficult 

 to find a man that could sow clover tolerably ; they had a habit 

 to throw it once with the hand to two large strides and go 

 twice in each cast ; thus, with 9 or 10 Ib. of seed to an acre, 

 two-thirds of the ground was unplanted. To remedy this 

 I made a hopper, to be drawn by a boy, that planted an acre 

 sufficiently with 6 Ib. of seed ; but when I added to this hopper 

 an exceeding light plough that made 6 channels eight inches 

 asunder, into which 2 Ib. to an acre being drilled the ground 

 was as well planted. This drill was easily drawn by a man, 

 and sometimes by a boy.' 



His invention was largely prompted by his desire to do 

 without the insolent farm servant whom he has described 

 above, and the year after it was invented he certainly had his 

 wish, for they struck in a body and were dismissed : ' it were 

 more easy to teach the beasts of the field than to drive the 

 ploughman out of his way.' 



His ideas were largely derived from the mechanism of the 

 organ which, being fond of music, he had mastered in his 

 youth a rotary mechanism, which is the foundation of all 

 agricultural sowing implements. His first invention may be 

 described as a drill plough to sow wheat and turnip seed in 

 drills three rows at a time, a harrow to cover the seed being 

 attached. Afterwards he invented a turnip drill, so arranged 

 as regards dropping the seed and its subsequent covering with 

 soil that half the seed should come up earlier than the rest, to 



