PART IL-CHAPTEU VII. 



AGRICULTURE. 



[THE late Mr. Thos. Davis, of Longlcat, Steward to the Marquess of Bath, drew up an admirable 

 "View of the Agriculture of the County of Wilts," which was printed by the Board of Agriculture 

 in 1794. 8vo. J. B.] 



CONSIDERING the distance of place where I now write, London, and the distance of time that I 

 lived in this county, I am not able to give a satisfactorie account of the husbandry thereof. I will 

 only say of our husbandmen, as Sir Thorn. Overbury does of the Oxford scholars, that they goe 

 after the fashion ; that is, when the fashion is almost out they take it up : so our countrey-men are 

 very late and very unwilling to learnc or be brought to new improvements. 



[It was scarcely a reproach to the Wiltshire husbandmen to be far behind those of more en- 

 lightened counties, when, in the seat of learning, where the mental faculties of the students ought to 

 have been continually exercised and cultivated, and not merely occupied in learning useless Greek 

 and Latin, the " Oxford scholars" followed, rather than led, the fashion. Agricultural societies were 

 then unknown, farmers had little communication with distant districts, and consequently knew 

 nothing of the practice of other places ; rents were low, and the same families continued in the 

 farms from generation to generation, pursuing the same routine of Agriculture which their fathers 

 and grandfathers had pursued " time out of mind." In the clays of my own boyhood, nearly seventy 

 years ago, I spent some time at a solitary farmhouse in North Wiltshire, with a grandfather and his 

 family, and can remember the various occupations and practices of the persons employed in the 

 dairy, and on the grazing and corn lands. I never saw either a book or newspaper hi the house ; 

 nor were any accounts of the farming kept. J. B.] 



The Devonshire men were the earliest improvers. I heard Oliver Cromwell, Protector, at dinner 

 at Hampton Court, 1657 or 8, tell the Lord Arundcll of Wardour and the Lord Fitzwilliams that 

 he had been in all the counties of England, and that the Devonshire husbandry was the best : and 

 at length we have obtained a good deal of it, which is now well known and need not to be rehearsed. 

 But William Scott, of Hedington, a very understanding man in these things, told me that since 1630 

 the fashion of husbandry in this country had been altered three times over, still refining. 



Mr. Bishop, of Merton, first brought into the south of Wiltshire the improvement by burn-beking 

 or Denshiring, about 1639. He learnt it in Flanders; it is very much used in this parish, and their 

 neighbours doe imitate them : they say 'tis good for the father, but naught for the son, by reason 

 it does so weare out the heart of the land. 



[The reader will find many observations of this nature, and on analogous subjects, in the manu- 



