erty till after the middle of the fifteenth century. The crusades 

 improved the condition of the English farmer somewhat, by 

 withdrawing many of the nobles from the country, making the 

 acquisition of land easier to the common people. The sixteenth 

 century was the time when the progress of the middle classes 

 began, and since then it has been uninterrupted and agriculture 

 has steadily advanced. 



The first book on farming published in England, bears the 

 date of 1523, and was called the "Book of Husbandry;" it 

 was written by Sir Anthony Fitz-Herbert, a farmer of forty-one 

 years experience. He advocated mixed farming and says, tk a 

 farmer cannot thrive by his corn without cattle, nor by his cattle 

 without corn, hence he should raise both." The name of 

 Jethrow Trull appears in the early part of the eighteenth cen- 

 tury, as a progressive farmer, a part of whose experience will be 

 of interest to us. He visited Spain and found the method of 

 cultivating hoed crops in drills was in common use in that 

 country, though at that time unknown elsewhere. It had been 

 introduced to Spain by the Saracens, who practised irrigation, 

 and found that a supply of water could be applied to a crop 

 more evenly and with less expense when grown in rows ; the 

 better appearance of fields thus planted, favorably impressed 

 Mr. Trull and on his return home he determined to introduce 

 the method to England. But when he told his workmen to 

 plow straight furrows for planting, instead of digging out the 

 hills with bog-hoes, as they had always done, they refused, on 

 the ground that the use of the plow would deprive them of 

 work. In vain Mr. Trull told them that he could plant more 

 land and would keep them emploj-ed. They would have noth- 

 ing to do with foreign ways. Whereupon he took the plow and 

 did the work himself. " We'll be even with him yet," said the 

 men, " he can't hoe his field alone and not one of us will do a 

 day's work for him."' By this time Mr. Trull was determined 

 to win in the contest, and being a man of inventive capacity, at 

 hoeing time he appeared in the field with a horse-hoe of his own 



