On Agricultural Tours^ ^c. 293 



and, with proper assistance, might perhaps (to speak 

 modestly) in time equal the improvements of our elder 

 brethren. If the rest of the world possessed no other 

 account of the agriculture of England, than what has 

 been observed and published by foreign travellers 

 among them, our information would be imperfect in- 

 deed. — It is wonderful that the benefits of the press, 

 that rapid, cheap, and easy mode of communication, 

 which brings distant nations to each other, and famili- 

 arizes one half of the globe with the daily events and 

 domestic transactions of the other, should have been 

 neglected by ourselves on this important subject. Slow, 

 imperfect, and uncertain, as verbal communication is, it 

 is as yet almost the only means of information ; and 

 while we know distinctly and fully, by taking up a 

 book, the course of husbandry in Norfolk, Sussex, and 

 Lancashire, we cannot I believe, beyond a few scattered 

 instances, find a single printed memorial of the course 

 of husbandry of a state in the union. Like our tawnev 

 predecessors, we must depend on "the tales of our old 

 men," or the accidental arrival of an inhabitant from the 

 place, before we can acquire the knowledge we want. 

 This is withholding the facility acquired by the art of 

 printing, from that art ; which, as it is the most neces- 

 sary, must be admitted to be the most important to 

 man. 



Let me then venture to suggest, that as soon as a 

 suiticient fund can be raised, and a suitable person 

 found, an agricultural tour should be set on foot under 

 directions of the society ; beginning in one of these 

 counties, such as Lancaster or Berks, in which the ope- 

 rations of agriculture have hitherto been carried on with 



