AGRICULTURE. 



Though there is generally some directions for 

 "plucking up the naughty weeds." Heresba- 

 chius is the first that we have met with who 

 notices the advantage of loosening the surface 

 of the soil about growing crops. " Sometimes," 

 he. says, "raking is needful, which, in the 

 spring, loosens the earth made clung by the 

 cold of winter, and letteth in the fresh warmth. 

 It is best to rake wheat, barley, and beans 

 twice. Moreover, they break asunder with a 

 roller the larger and stiffer clods." (Googe's 

 Heresbachhis, [printed in 1578,] 256.) It was 

 not till the time of Tull, 1731, that the due im- 

 portance of this was appreciated. 



Of the other operations of agriculture, as 

 reaping, mowing, stacking, and the like, there 

 seems no need of making mention: they were 

 prrli'imed much in the same way as now. 

 " Corn," says the author last quoted, "should 

 be cut before it is thorough hard ; experience 

 teacheth that if it be cut down in due time, the 

 seed will grow to fulness as it lieth in the 

 barn." (G>oge's Heresbachiuv, 406.) According 

 to Henry, the practice with our ancestors was 

 for the women to thresh and the men to reap, 

 (///.v/. of Britain, vi. 173.) 



Irrigation seems to have been practised in a 

 few places in Britain from the time of the Ro- 

 mans, there being meadows near Salisbury 

 which have been irrigated from time immemo- 

 rial. Lord Bacon mentions it as a practice 

 well understood in his time (1560 1626) ; and 

 at the same period, 1610, appeared a work by 

 Robert Vaughan, detailing the mode of "sum- 

 mer and winter drowning of meadows and 

 pastures, thereby to make those grounds more 

 fertile ten for one." It was not, however, till 

 the close of the last century that the attention 

 of agriculturists was much aroused to the sub- 

 ject. The writings of Boswell, Wright, West- 

 ern, and others, between the years 1780 and 

 1824, partially awakened the farmers to the 

 importance of the practice. The best exam- 

 ples of it are to be observed in Gloucestershire 

 and Wiltshire ; but it is now one of the prac- 

 tices of farming that is the most undeservedly 

 neglected. Mr. Welladvise was its great pro- 

 moter in Gloucestershire. 



Live Stock. Cattle and sheep were the chief 

 riches of the Britons when they became first 

 known to the Romans (Caesar, v. c. x.), and 

 they are still a great source of our agricultural 

 riches. 



Sheep. In a very earty Anglo-Saxon MS. a 

 shepherd is represented as saying, " In the first 

 part of the morning I drive my sheep to their 

 pasture, and stand over them in heat and in 

 cold with dogs, lest the wolves destroy them. 

 I lead them back to their folds, and milk them 

 twice a clay ; and I move their folds and make 

 cheese and butter." (Turner's Anglu-Sax. ii. 

 546.) 



This attention to sheep was attended with so 

 much success that they became an object of 

 acqiiirement by the continental nations ; and 

 in the reign of Edward IV. at the time a treaty 

 of peace was concluded with Spain (1466), a 

 license was granted by that monarch " for cer- 

 tain Coteswold sheep to be transported to 

 Spain, as people report, which have there so 

 multiplied and increased, that it hath turned 



AGRICULTURE. 



| the commodity of England much to the Spanish 

 j profit, and to the no small hinderance of the 

 ' gain which was beforetimes in England raised 

 of them." (HaWs Chronicle, 266. Holinshed, 

 668.) The sheep thus exported were probably 

 improved by attention and climate till they had 

 become that breed of Merinos which was re- 

 imported to this country early in the present 

 century. The statute 3 H. 6, c. 2, forbids the 

 exportation of sheep. The fears which old 

 chroniclers may have ignorantly entertained, 

 that the exporting of sheep would be injurious 

 to our native commerce, have in all succeed- 

 ing years been proved to be fallacious. The 

 demand for our wool was so large, and the 

 consequent increase of the breed of sheep was 

 so great, that an impolitic legislature in 1533 

 endeavoured to check it. The preamble of the 

 act states, that " divers of the king's subjects, 

 to whom God of his goodness hath disposed 

 great plenty and abundance of moveable sub- 

 stance, now of late, within few years, have 

 daily studied, invented, and practised ways 

 and means to accumulate into few hands, as 

 well great multitudes of farms as great plenty 

 of cattle, and in especial sheep, putting such 

 lands as they can get to pasture and not to 

 tillage, whereby they have not only pulled 

 ili\vn churches and towns, and enhanced the 

 old rates of the rents, and that no poor man is 

 able to meddle with it, but also have raised 

 the prices of all manner of corn, cattle, &c., 

 almost double above the prices accustomed, to 

 the great injury, &c., of his majesty's sub- 

 jects ; and as it is thought that the greatest 

 occasion of this accumulation is the profit that 

 cometh of sheep, which now be come to a few 

 persons' hands of this realm, that some have 

 24,000, some 20,000, &c., by which a good 

 sheep for victual, that was accustomed to be 

 sold for 2*. 4d., &c., is now sold for 6s., &c. ; 

 which things thus used be principally to the 

 high displeasure of Almighty God, to the decay 

 of the hospitality of this realm, to the diminish- 

 ing of the king's people, and to the let of cloth- 

 making," &c. It then enacts, that no one shall 

 have more than 2000 sheep ; though, as a sub- 

 sequent section declares every hundred to con- 

 sist of six score, the limited number was 2400. 

 And it further enacts, that no man shall have 

 above two farms. (25 H. 8, c. 13.) 



Harrison, who died in 1593, describes our 

 sheep as very excellent, " sith for sweetness 

 of flesh they pass all other. And so much are 

 our wools to be preferred before those of Milesia 

 and other places, that if Jason had known the 

 value of them that are bred and to be had in 

 Britain, he would never have gone to Colchis 

 to look for any there." (Description of England, 

 prefixed to Holinshed, 220.) Heresbach, who 

 was a contemporary, gives such a description 

 of the best form and qualities of sheep, that it 

 is evident that the excellence of the breed was 

 not the mere effect of chance. (Googe's Heres- 

 bach. 1376.) From that period till the latter 

 half of the eighteenth century, we are not ac- 

 | quainted with any efforts further to improve it. 

 I This last-mentioned period was the era of the 

 improvements effected by Mr. Bakewell and 

 his pupils, the Messrs. Culley. 



Bakewell was born in 1726, at Ditchley in. 



45 



