IN A UNIVERSITY CURRICULUM 5 



tions of the Board. ... I pledge myself that if I may, 

 as an individual, be allowed the honour of interfering 

 in the management of such a farm, it shall, under the 

 blessing of Providence, pay its rent/ 



As the end of the eighteenth century witnessed the 

 formal initiation of education in Agriculture, so it was 

 also the period that gave birth to the genuinely 

 scientific literature of the subject. It is true that long 

 before that time Fitzherbert, Tusser, Markham, Blith, 

 Weston, Hartlib, Tull, and others, had described the 

 agricultural conditions of various districts in this and 

 other countries, or had recorded their views on tillages, 

 crops, and stock. But it was reserved for Lord Dun- 

 donald to give shape to the idea that was gradually 

 forming in the minds of the philosophers of that period, 

 and to emphasize, once for all, the dependence of 

 agriculture on chemistry. This he did in two works, 

 the one A Treatise, showing the intimate connexion 

 between Agriculture and Chemistry, published in 1795; 

 and the other The Principles of Chemistry applied to 

 the Improvement of Agriculture, which was issued four 

 years later. 



It was in the closing years of the eighteenth century, 

 and the early years of the nineteenth, that two dis- 

 tinguished Englishmen were, each in his own way, 

 doing much to improve the conditions of Agriculture. 

 Arthur Young, the first Secretary of the Board of 

 Agriculture, was mainly responsible for the preparation 

 of the voluminous series of county reports to the Board, 

 which did so much to render general information that 

 had previously been purely local. Largely at Young's 

 instigation the Board of Agriculture invited Sir Hum- 

 phrey Davy to expound before them the scientific basis 

 of the farmer's business, and this he continued to do 



