Chap. VIII.] Agricullurc. 103 



ker, and very lately Forsyth, ^vho is said to liavr 

 improved greatly on the labours of all wlio had 

 gone before him. 



From the increased attention to agricuUure and 

 gardening, in the course of the last ago, lias arisen 

 an important fact, which the friend of human, hap- 

 piness 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 m.an. In th^* 

 eighteenth some progress has been made toward 

 the correction of this errour, 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 impro\'ement of the impk- 

 nients of husbandry ; and the almost infmite 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 gi'cat 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. Marshall, 

 Mr. Arthur Young, Dr. Anderson, Mr. Coke, sir 



* Sir John Pringle states, on the authority of Mr.- Miller, the 

 keeper of the botanie garden at Ciielsea, and author of the Gar- 

 dcners Dictionari/, that the quantity of vegetables used in iind nc;ir 

 London, at the time of the Revolution, in 1688, was not more tliMii 

 one sixth of what was used in the same place in 1 7-^0- See Ranj- 

 gAY's Rerir.:\ 



