THE SCIENTIFIC SPIRIT IN ENGLAND. 285 



stimulated active exercise and outdoor sport; the abun- 

 dant rains, which fed the many rivulets with a constant 

 supply of fresh water, suggested the cultivation of that 

 pastime of which Izaak Walton had left a classical de- 

 scription, long before Eousseau in France made the love 

 of nature a fashionable sentiment. Lord Bacon pointed 

 to the study of natural phenomena as the only source 

 of knowledge. Evelyn wrote a treatise on forest-trees, 

 and the old-fashioned English flower-garden is immor- 

 talised in Bacon's ' Essays,' in the " Winter's Tale," in 

 Cowper's " Task," and in the works of many other poets. 

 Through the literature of the eighteenth century there 

 runs a vein of increasing love and knowledge of natural 

 objects and natural scenery, beginning in Thomson and 

 Gray, widening and deepening in Erasmus Darwin and 

 Cowper, and attaining full vigour and originality in 

 Burns and Wordsworth, as also in the school of English 

 landscape-painting. William and Caroline Herschel corn- 

 Next caine the Bath and West of kind), by which funds were raised, 

 England Society, 1777 ; the High- and an eminent chemist engaged " 

 land Society, 1784; and the Na- ('Ency. Brit.,' article "Agricul- 

 tional Board of Agriculture, 1793. ture," vol. i. p. 305). There is pro- 

 The 'Farmer's Magazine' was start- bably no country where farming is 

 ed in 1800. About the same time j such a favourite pursuit of gentle- 

 that Lawes and Gilbert in England ' men of leisure and wealth as Great 

 and Liebig in Germany gave such Britain, or where the intelligence 

 an impetus to scientific farming of higher society and of the univer- 

 through their experiments and pub- j sities is so liberally transferred to 

 lications, "Mr John Finnic at Swan- the benefit of the country, of its 

 ston, near Edinburgh, having sug- | population, its crops, and its live- 

 gested (1842) to some of his neigh- ; stock. Among many examples of 

 bours the desirableness of obtaining j the past and present I mention as 

 the aid of chemistry to guide far- an outcome of this spirit the little 

 rners in many departments of their volume by Sir Thomas Dyke Ac- 

 business, the hint was promptly i land, ' On the Chemistry of Farm- 

 acted upon, and these Mid-Lothian i ing' (London: Simpkin & Co., 

 tenant-farmers had the merit of 1891), and his liberal patronage 

 originating an Agricultural Chem- ; of agriculture in the west of Eng- 

 istry Association (the first of its land. 



