86 AsivicultinT, 



t> 



an important fact, which the friend of human 

 happiness must contemplate with pleasure, viz. a 

 great increase in the use of vegetable food. In the 

 seventeenth century animal food constituted an 

 undue proportion of the nutriment of man. In the 

 eighteenth some progress has been made towards 

 the correction of this error, though this desirable 

 end is yet far from being fully accomplished." 



It would be difficult, in truth, to mention a sin- 

 gle principle or practice in agriculture which has 

 not been more or less improved within the period 

 under consideration. The advantages and defects 

 of particular soils ; the efficacy of manures; the 

 rotation of crops ; the improvement of the imple- 

 7nents of husbandry; and the almost infinite variety 

 of inquiries connected with agricultural pursuits, 

 have been investigated with great diligence, and 

 have received much elucidation in the course of 

 the last age. For a great amount of useful infor- 

 mation on these subjects, and for multiplied im- 

 provements in agriculture generally, the public is 

 indebted to Mr. Miller, Mr. Ellis, Mr. Mar- 

 shall, Mr. Arthur Young, Mr. Anderson, Mr. 

 Coke, Sir John Sinclair, and many others, of 

 Great-Britain; to Messrs. Du Hamel, Chateau- 

 viEux, Tourbilly, RoziER, Tessier, Brous- 

 soNET, Tillet, and Parmentier, of France; be- 

 sides many others, equally entitled to notice, in 

 other parts of Europe. 



Probably the most complete and scientific work 

 on this subject now in possession of the public, is 

 the Fhytologia, or the Philosophy of Agriculture 

 and Gardening y by Dr. Darwin, of Great-Britain. 

 In this work the learned and ingenious author has 



< Sir John Pringle states, on the authority of Mr. Miller, the keeper 

 of the botanic garden at Chelsea, and author of the Gardener's Dictionary^ 

 that the quantity of vegetable?, us-.d in and near London, at the time of 

 the Revolution, in 1688, was not more than ore sixth of what v/as used ill 

 the same place in 17JO. See Ramsay's /icvicz;.: 



