Maivli. 1921. 



SCIENTIFIC AC RICUIjTURE 



111 



English Agriculture in the Seventeenth Century 



DEAN E. A. HOWES, University of Alberta, Ediiumton. 

 (All address before the Provincial Fairs and Dairy Associations, Calgary, February 17, 1921.) 



Anyone wlio lias been I'oUowing closel.>' the trend 

 of agricultural thought during the years which have 

 succeeded armistice cannot help but be impressed 

 with the fact that there is a great forward move- 

 ment in the interest in and enthusiasm for I'eseareh 

 work in agriculture. At the large gathering of 

 Technical Agriculturists held at Ottawa last year 

 this thought was doubly impressed upon me. During 

 all the meetings the discu.ssions seemed to hark back 

 to the necessity for more investigation and experi- 

 mental work, and there wa.s a spirit of frankness 

 tliroiighout that gathering shown by a readiness to 

 acknowledge that experimental work had not pro- 

 gressed during the years past as it should have done. 

 This frankness is itself indicative of a keener in- 

 terest being manifested by practising farmers in the 

 work of experiment and its value to the farming 

 communities.. Of the many hundreds of fai'raers 

 who have visited us at the ITniversity during the 

 past year, a surprisingly large percentage have shown 

 a keen, constructive interest in the experiments we 

 have been carrying on and in the application of 

 these to their own conditions. There is no gain- 

 saying the fact that experimental work in all de- 

 partments of agriculture is experiencing a >*ort of 

 reincarnation since the close of the war. Nor is the 

 cause far to seek. It is not in agriculture alone but 

 in practically all fields of human endeavor that we 

 find the practices of our people jarred loose from 

 the restraints of old precedents. Many liave said tlhat 

 there .seems to be something in the air; whatever it 

 is, sometliing lias taken place, and things can never 

 be as they were before 1914. I assure you this is 

 particularly true in the field of agricnlture. Then, 

 too, the war gave a decided impetus to inventive 

 thought and while tliis was particularly true toward 

 the front, it was true as well where men were labor- 

 ing in works of production, and the more progres- 

 sive farmers have undoubtedly caught tlie sjiirit 

 which urges one to see if a thing can not be done 

 in a better way or to more purpose. Hence the 

 great interest shown all over our continent at pres- 

 ent in work of investigation. 



It is my wish, in this address, to take you with 

 me on an excursion into the history of past reseai-ch 

 work, and to lay before you the experience of a 

 jieople four hundred years ago wlio went through 

 very much the same experience as we are going 

 through at present, although of course not over 

 such a wide-flung .space. In the latter part of the 

 sixteenth century a great change was taking place 

 in English agriculture. Farming instead of being 

 (if the community type had dcvelojied into a condi- 

 tion where individual effort was fostered. Then 

 came the Civil War, the war between Cavalier and 

 Round Head. It is a fact that this war did not have 

 much effect on the farming community, but T men- 

 tion it to fix the period in j^our minds. 



There was, in the early part of the seventeenth 

 century, a very pi-onounced surge forward in the 

 interest in agriculture, and consequently in the in- 



terest in experimental work relating to it. 1 might 

 call your attention to the fact that this was piob 

 ably the first indication of a reallj' scientific atti- 

 tude toward the work of agriculture. it is ti-ue 

 that a study of the History of Agriculture shows 

 us that men have long ago perfected practices some- 

 times in a way tliat we of the present day have not 

 been able to equal. But the very minute that they 

 attempted an explanation of these practices they be- 

 came, as one writer said, pagans. We do not know 

 .iust when scientific investigation really began in 

 England, but we do know when the first records ap- 

 peared and I would call your attention, by way of 

 illustration, to the fact that in 1610 we find a dis- 

 cussion on the subject of irrigation, although it 

 dealt only with meadows and pastures. In 1638 

 treatment of seed before sowing was recommended, 

 treatments which show that the writer must have 

 studied the question from a scientific standjioint 

 rather than from that of superstitious lore. At the 

 same time he advocates sowing with wheat drills 

 instead of broadcavSt, and the same man invented a 

 drill for the purpose. 



It is true that previous to 1600 there was no dearth 

 of books on agriculture. Indeed the people .seem to 

 have been as prolific in the way of writing on things 

 agricultural then as now, and the agricultural 

 writers of those days earned distinction in that they 

 produced a man who has been called "the first 

 English Hack Writer.'" His number has become 

 legion. But it is in the first half of the seventeenth 

 century that wo find writers taking what might be 

 called a tnily scientific attitude toward the work, 

 and the two instances I have given you are but in- 

 dicative of a great deal of advanced thought in this 

 field. We find writers earnestly advocating that 

 the Government should establish 'Colleges of Ex- 

 periment," and let me quote you one of the reasons 

 given: "Men do not know where to go if they 

 want advice and to obtain reliable seeds and 

 plants." I might say that in those days also there 

 was advocated a scheme for conveying a knowledge 

 of improvements in agriculture to the farmer, a sort 

 of agricultural extension service to the farmer if you 

 please. There was really a wonderful spirit of prog- 

 ress in the agricultural idea in the first half of the 

 sevent'ccntji centuiy, a spirit to which I'he attit\ide 

 at the jiresent time is very kiiulred, being really only 

 a repetition of other days and other times. Let us 

 then study the history of that other period of pro- 

 gression and see if we can profit by it. It is a 

 stupid man, indeed, who does not profit bj- the 

 experience of others. 



In that period of progress in agricultural science 

 which I have roughly described as the first half of 

 the seventeenth century, we find two things militat- 

 ing against any rapid advance in the effect of sci- 

 entific discoveries upon agricultural practices. I 

 cannot do better than <|uote a few words from two 

 writers of that time. They will put before you the 

 difficulties, and I siiall leave it with von if the same 



