SIR HUMPHRY DAVY 217 



S. T. Coleridge, and the talent, rank, and fashion of London, women 

 as well as men. His six lectures on agricultural chemistry, com- 

 mencing May 10, 1803, were delivered before the Board of Agri- 

 culture. So great was their success that he was appointed Professor 

 of Chemistry to the Board, and in that capacity gave courses of 

 lectures during the ten following years. In 1813 the results of his 

 researches were published in his Elements' of Agricultural Chemistry. 

 The volume is now out-of-date, though the lecture on " Soils and 

 their Analyses," in spite of the progress of geological science and 

 the adoption of new classifications, remains of permanent interest. 

 Many passages that were then listened to as novelties are now com- 

 monplaces ; others, especially those on manures, have been com- 

 pletely superseded by the advance of knowledge. But if the book 

 has ceased to be a practical guide, it remains a historical landmark, 

 and something more. It^ is the foundation-atone on which the 

 science of agricultural chemistry has been reared, and its author 

 was the direct ancestor of Liebig, Lawes, and Gilbert, to whose 

 labours, in the field which Davy first explored, modern agriculture 

 is at every turn so deeply indebted. It was Davy's work which 

 inspired the choice by the Royal Agricultural Society (founded in 

 1838) of its motto " Practice with Science." 



In Thomas Coke of Norfolk l the new system of large farms and 

 large capital found their most celebrated champion. In 1776, at 

 the age of twenty-two, he came into his estate with " the King of 

 Denmark " as " his nearest neighbour." Wealthy, devoted to 

 field sports, and already Member of Parliament for Norfolk, it 

 seemed improbable that he would find time for farming. But as 

 an ardent Whig and a prominent supporter of Fox in the House of 

 Commons, he was excluded by his politics from court life or political 

 office. In 1778 the refusal of two tenants to accept leases at an 

 increased rent threw a quantity of land on his hands. He deter- 

 mined to farm the land himself. From that time till his death in 

 1842, he stood at the head of the new agricultural movement. On 

 his own estates his energy was richly rewarded. Dr. Rigby, 2 

 writing in 1816, states that the annual rental of Holkham rose from 

 2,200 in 1776 to 20,000 in 1816. 



When Coke took his land in hand, not an acre of wheat was 



1 Coke of Norfolk and his Friends, by A. M. W. Stirling, 2 vols. 1910. 

 1 The Pamphleteer, vol. xiii. pp. 469-70 ; Holkham and its Agriculture, 3rd 

 edition, 1818, pp. 25, 28. 



