INTRODUCTION OF TURNIP HUSBANDRY. 269 



for*the advanced condition which it exhibits at the present 

 day, as their cultivation was first established, and their 

 treatment made generally known, in Roxburgh, Berwick, 

 and Northumberland, by the enlightened farm practice of 

 Dawson, Pringle, and Culley. Before these well-known 

 men had established the practice of turnip husbandry, it 

 had been successfully achieved in Dumfriesshire by Craig 

 of Arbigland, who drilled his turnips in 1745, and by 

 Philip Howard of Corby, a great Cumberland proprietor, 

 who followed the same practice in 1755 both of them 

 taking their lesson from, and following the instructions 

 given in lull's book. Then came Pringle of Coldstream, and, 

 a few years afterwards, Dawson, who, having spent some 

 time in Norfolk, and seen the system there practised, went 

 back to Roxburghshire, and carried it out successfully on 

 his own farm. Its introduction, it appears, was marked 

 by the general distrust with which farmers usually view 

 any innovation on old customs that does not originate 

 with one of their own class. Although they had had 

 opportunities of seeing its manifest advantage, year after 

 year, on the farm of Mr. Pringle, none seemed disposed to 

 follow his example until Dawson came down and settled 

 among them, when the very men who had so long 

 neglected the lesson taught them by Pringle now gladly 

 followed Dawson's example, because he was one of their 

 own class a rent-paying farmer. In the Agriculture of 

 Northumberland written for the Board of Agriculture 

 by Messrs. Bailey and Culley in speaking of this subject, 

 they say " that at first his practice met with many oppo- 

 nents, and was ridiculed by the old, the ignorant, and the 

 prejudiced ; but his superior farming and crops soon gained 

 converts, and the practice in a few years became general." 

 In Northumberland George Culley took it up, and gave 

 it a character ; and thus turnip husbandry by this new 

 mode of treatment soon became firmly established in the 



