442 AGRICULTURE. 



and hops, in regard they would spyle the taste of drinck, and 

 endanger the people." 



Worlidge's "System of Agriculture" was published in 1668. 

 It treats of improvements in general, of enclosing meadows 

 and pastures, and of watering and draining them ; of clovers, 

 vetches, spurry, Wiltshire long-grass, (probably that of the 

 meadows of Salisbury,) hemp, flax, rape, turnips, etc. A Per- 

 sian wheel was made by his direction, in Wiltshire, in 1665, that 

 carried water in good quantity above twenty feet high, for 

 watering meadows, and another near Godalming in Surrey. 

 Sowing clover and other seeds preserved the cattle in the fatal 

 winter of 1673, in the southern parts of England; whereas, in 

 the western and northern, through defect of hay and pasture, 

 the greater part of their cattle perished. Hops enough were 

 not planted, but were imported from the Netherlands, of a 

 quality not so good as those grown in the country. 



Among other writers of this century may be mentioned 

 Bacon, who, in his natural history, has some curious observa- 

 tions on agriculture ; Ray, the botanist, whose works are rich in 

 facts ; and Evelyn, a great encourager of all manner of improve- 

 ments, as well as a useful writer on planting. Some of the 

 works of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries are now very 

 scarce, and most of them little known to the agriculturists of 

 the present day. In almost all of them there is much that is 

 now useless, and not a little that is trifling and foolish ; yet the 

 labor of perusal is not altogether fruitless. He who wishes 

 to view the condition of the great body of the people, during 

 this period, as well as the cultivator who still obstinately resists 

 every new practice, may be gratified and instructed in tracing 

 the gradual progress of improvement, both in enjoyment and 

 useful industry. 



Agriculture began to be studied, as a science, in the principal 

 countries of Europe, about the middle of the sixteenth century. 

 The works of Crescenzio in Italy, Olivier de Serres in France, 

 Heresbach in Germany, Herrera in Spain, and Fitzherbert in 

 England, all published at about that time, supplied the materials 

 for study, and led to improved practices among the reading 

 agriculturists. The art of farming received a second impulse, 

 about the middle of the seventeenth century, after the general 



