AGRICULTURE IN BRITAIN. 441 



bandry of Brabant and Flanders, published by Hartlibb in 1645, 

 we may mark the dawn of vast improvements, which have since 

 been effected in Britain. This gentleman was ambassador from 

 England to the Elector Palatine and King of Bohemia, in 1619, 

 and had the merit of being the first who introduced the great 

 clover, as it was then called, into English agriculture, about 

 1645, an d probably turnips also. In less than ten years after 

 its introduction that is, about 1655, the culture of clover, 

 exactly according to the present method, was well known in 

 England, and had made its way even to Ireland. 



A great many works on agriculture appeared during the 

 Commonwealth, of which Blythe's " Improver Improved," and 

 Hartlibb's " Legacy," are the most valuable. The first edition 

 of the former was published in 1649, anc ^ f tne latter in 1650, 

 and both of them were enlarged in subsequent editions. In 

 the first edition of the " Improver Improved," no mention is 

 made of clover, nor of turnips in the second, but in the third, 

 published in 1662, clover is treated of at some length, and 

 turnips are recommended as an excellent cattle crop, the culture 

 of which should be extended from the kitchen garden to the 

 field. 



Blythe's book is the first systematic work in which there are 

 some traces of the convertible husbandry so beneficially estab- 

 lished since, by interposing clover and turnips between culmif- 

 erous crops. He is a great enemy to commons and common 

 fields, and to retaining land in old pastures, unless it be of the 

 best quality. His description of different kinds of plows is 

 interesting, and he justly recommends such as were drawn by 

 two horses, some even by one horse, in preference to the 

 clumsy, weighty machines, which required four or more horses 

 or oxen. Nearly all the manures now used were then well 

 known, and he brought lime himself from a distance of twenty 

 miles. He speaks of an instrument which plowed, sowed, and 

 harrowed at the same time ; and the setting of grain was then a 

 subject of much discussion. " It was not many years," says 

 Blythe, " since the famous city of London petitioned the parlia- 

 ment of England against two anusancies or offensive commod- 

 ities, which were likely to come into great use and esteem, 

 and that was Newcastle coals, in regard of their stench, etc., 



