4 PREFACE. 



Agriculture, although the most ancient of the arts, not 

 only coeval with, but in truth the sun from which emanated 

 the da\A a of civilization, is, nevertheless, the art in which 

 the beneficial effects of modern improvement are most strik- 

 ingly exemplified. Let us contrast its former with its pre- 

 sent condition in Great Britain. 



According to English laws in force from the fifth to the 

 eleventh century, ' all the cattle of a village, though belong- 

 ing to different owners, were pastured together in one herd, 

 under the direction of one person, (with proper assistants,) 

 whose oath in all disputes about the cattle was decisive. 

 Their ploughs seem to have been very slight and inartificial ; 

 for it was enacted that no man should undertake to guide a 

 plough who could not make one ; and that the driver should 

 make the ropes with which it was drawn of twisted willows. 

 But slight as these ploughs were, it was usual for six or eight 

 persons to form themselves into a society for fitting out one 

 of them, and providing it with oxen, and every thing neces- 

 sary for ploughing ; and many minute and curious laws were 

 made for the regulation of such societies. This is a suffi- 

 cient proof both of the poverty of the husbandman and the 

 imperfect state of agriculture among the ancient Britons of 

 this period.'^ 



' By the laws of Ina, king of the West Saxons, who 

 flourished in the end of the seventh and beginning of the 

 eighth century, a farm consisting of ten hides or ploughlands 

 was to pay the following rent, viz. : ten casks of honey, 

 three hundred loaves of bread, twelve casks of strong ale, 

 two oxen, ten wethers, ten geese, twenty hens, ten cheeses, 

 one cask of butter, five salmon, twenty pounds of forage, 

 and one hundred eels.'t Such has been the state of tillage 

 in that country which is now eulogized as the garden of 

 Europe ! 



Improvements in breeds of domestic animals by judicious 

 crosses, and propagating from the best specimens of their 

 species, as well as plentiful and suitable feeding, have ad- 

 vanced the state of agriculture more than the most sanguine 

 advocate for scientific husbandry could have anticipated. 

 To say nothing of the wonders effected by Bakewell and 

 other eminent improvers in that department of husbandry, 

 we will glance at the comparative states of the London cattle 

 market at a distant and a less remote period. An English 



* Loudon's Encyc. Agr. p. 36. f Wilkin's Leges Saxon, p. 25. 



