WOOLLEN RAGS. 



cts. a Ib. This is a large per centage, we 

 admit ; but not so large as that established by 

 the Tariff of 1832, which on all wool over 8 

 cts. a Ib. levied a duty of 4 cts. a pound and 

 32 per cent, ad valorem. On wool costing over 

 8 cts., the duties during all the years embraced 

 in the second of the above tables, except a part 

 of 1842, were, on an average, as high as they 

 are now. We wish this fact to be particularly 

 noted ; for it affords conclusive evidence that 

 the smallness of the importations of wool since 

 the new Tariff went into operation, is not oc- 

 casioned by that Tariff. It is occasioned, in 

 part, by the market having been over-stocked 

 with coarse wool during 1841 and 1842 (nearly 

 17,000,000 Ibs. having been imported during 

 those 2 years from Buenos Ayres alone), 

 partly by the prostration of carpet manufactur- 

 ing in this country for the last year or two, on 

 account of low prices and the scarcity of mo- 

 ney, and partly by the cheapness of wool grown 

 in the United States. This last is what is going, 

 very soon, to nullify the Tariff, and importa- 

 tions too, so far as wool is concerned. We 

 have no doubt that in 10 years perhaps less 

 we shall become a wool-exporting country to 

 such an extent that protection against imported 

 wool will be as effective as it now is against 

 imported cotton ; and no more so. [We still 

 lay a duty of 3 cts. a pound on cotton, which 

 does neither hurt nor good.] The great west 

 is coming, with her immense prairies, admi- 

 rably adapted to sheep, and she will soon de- 

 luge the country with wool and sheep-skins, as 

 she now does with hogs, bacon, pork, lard, lard- 

 oil, soap, &c. 



WOOLLEN RAGS. See RAO. 



WORK. See LABOUR. 



WORLIDGE, or WOOLRIDGE, JOHN. An 

 early English agricultural writer. But little 

 more is known of his history, than that he was 

 a gentleman who was a great lover of rural 

 affairs and gardening. Of his works I am only 

 acquainted with the following: 1. Systema 

 Agriculture; The Mystery of Husbandry disco- 

 vered and laid open, 16697781, 1687, folio, 

 1716, 8vo. 2. Treatise on Husbandry, 1675, 

 folio. 3. Systema Horticulture; or, The Art 

 of Gardening, 1677. 4. Vinetum Britannicum, 

 1678 91, 8vo. 5. The most easy way of mak- 

 ing Cyder, 1678. 6. Apiarium, 1691, 12mo. 



The Systema Agricultures was the most bulky 

 folio volume on agriculture that had yet ap- 

 peared, and its comprehensive themes are all 

 set forth in its first page. The authors of those 

 days seemed to consider it essential that their 

 readers should have, in the title-page of a book, 

 a complete summary of its inviting contents. 

 Woolridge was evidently of this opinion, for 

 his title-page announces that this was the 

 " Systema Agriculture, or the Mystery of Hus- 

 bandry discovered ; treating of the several new 

 and most advantageous ways of tilling, planting, 

 sowing, manureing, ordering, improveing, of 

 all sorts of gardens, orchards, meadows, pas- 

 tures, corn-lands, woods, and coppices ; as also 

 of fruits, corn-grain, pulse, new hays, cattle, 

 fowl, beasts, bees, silk-worms, and fish, with 

 an account of the several instruments and en- 

 gines used in the profession ; to which is added, 

 Kalendarium Rusticum, or the husbandman's 



WORLIDGE, JOHN. 



monthly directions ; also the prognosticks of 

 dearth, scarcity, plenty, sickness, heat, cold, 

 frost, snow, winds, rain, hail, thunder, &c. ; 

 and Dictionarium Rusticum, or the interpreta- 

 tion of rustick terms ; the whole work being 

 of great use and advantage to all that delight 

 in that most noble practice." It is dedicated 

 to the gentry and yeomanry of England, and 

 opens with a preface laudatory of agriculture. 

 Notwithstanding, however, the ill aspect of 

 this heavy title-page, the book contains more 

 useful and more enlightened observations on 

 many points of husbandry than any which had 

 preceded it. He was a warm friend to the en- 

 closure of commons and other waste land, and 

 he suggested, what in fact he appears (p. 21) 

 to have carried into effect in 1665, at Wilton, 

 the erection of water-works for the purpose of 

 flooding meadows, an improvement of which 

 I think not nearly so much has been made as 

 is possible in this land of steam and steam- 

 engines. He was evidently well acquainted 

 with the management of water-meads, and his 

 directions with relation to them are practical 

 and sensible. He advises that sandy meadows 

 should be chalked, and ashes applied to sour 

 rushy grasses. When speaking " of several 

 new species of hay or grass," he enumerates 

 clover-grass, trefoyle, St. Foyn, La Lucern, 

 ray-grass, &c. He also recommends the deep 

 ploughing or digging of land, and on all occa- 

 sions seemed alive to any improvement in the 

 implements of agriculture. After giving an 

 account, at some length, of the rude and clumsy 

 contrivance of Gabriel Platte, for a dibbling- 

 machine, he elaborately and earnestly advocates 

 the use of a drill, an engraving of one of which, 

 primitive enough, it is true, in its appearance, 

 he gives in his work. "To remove," he says, 

 "all manner of errors or inconveniences that 

 can be found in setting or hoeing of corn, I 

 shall here give you a plain and perfect de- 

 scription of an easy and feasible instrument 

 that shall disperse your corn, grain, or pulse, 

 of what kind soever, at what distance, and in 

 what proportion you please." The farmer 

 may be curious to know the construction of 

 this drill of a century and a half since. It had 

 a coulter, a pipe, a hopper, wheels, and axle- 

 trees. He was the first English author, I be- 

 lieve, who suggested the use of the manure- 

 drill, for, when speaking of the drill, he says 

 (p. 52), " By the use of this instrument also, 

 you may cover your grain or pulse with any 

 rich compost you shall prepare for that pur- 

 pose, either with pigeon's dung, dry or granu- 

 lated, or any other saline or lixivial substance 

 made disperseable, which may drop after the 

 corn, and prove an excellent improvement; for 

 we find experimentally, that pigeon's dung, 

 sown by the hand on wheat or barley, mightily 

 advantageth it by the common way of hus- 

 bandry; much more might we, therefore, ex- 

 pect this way, where the dung, or such like 

 substance, is all in the same furrow with the 

 corn, where, in the other vulgar way, a great 

 part thereof comes not near it. It may either 

 be done by having another hopper, on the same 

 frame, behind that for the corn, wherein the 

 compost may be put, and made to drop suc- 

 cessively after the corn, or it may be sown 

 5 E 2 1157 



