236 



NATURE 



[October 24, 1912 



quoted passages is accidental ; but many of Tusser's 

 rhymes so closely follow Xenophon's " Householde " 

 and Columella's Eleventh Book that I am satisfied 

 Tusser was familiar with both these ancient writers. 

 Here, for example, from Tusser, is the charge con- 

 cerning sick servants which Ischomachus gives to his 

 young wife : — 



" To Seruant in Sicknesse see nothing ye grutch, 

 a thing of a trifle shell comfort him mutch." 



And here is a maxim for the housewife that Columella 

 enforces : — 



" The woman the name of a huswife doth win 

 by keeping hir house and of dooings therein 

 And she that with husband will quietly dwell 

 must thinke on this lesson and follow it well." 



Until the dawn of the twentieth century no mere 

 man would have been found to question the conclusion 

 come to in the above verse; nevertheless, the emphasis 

 on the " quietly dwell " indicates that in this particular 

 case the inspiration is derived from Columella rather 

 than from Xenophon. For while the woman described 

 by the Greek writer is likened to the queen bee, by 

 the Roman there is much lamentation because of the 

 emergence of the "butterfly." Columella refers to 

 the diligent dames of ancient Rome who lived at home 

 and studied to improve their husbands' estates, and 

 contrasts them with their successors in the first century, 

 who had become indolent, refused to make their own 

 clothes, and spent their husbands' incomes on dress. 

 He then remarks, " Is it a wonder that these same 

 ladies think themselves mightily burdened with the 

 care of rural affairs, and esteem it a most sordid 

 business to stay a few days in their country houses? " 



It was, then, the practice of husbandry that engaged 

 the English agriculturist's attention from the time of 

 Walter de Henley to Thomas Tusser, and the purpose 

 of my digression into domestic subjects is to show 

 that when the ancient writers were rediscovered in 

 the middle of the sixteenth century, it was not the 

 frequent references of Xenophon to the science of hus- 

 bandry but his economic and moral teaching : not 

 Columella's First Book, with its appeal for "doctors 

 and disciples who might apply themselves to the study 

 of agriculture, but his Eleventh Book, with its calen- 

 dar of operations and its directions for the ordering 

 of the bailiff and the bailiff's wife, that attracted 

 Tusser and his readers. 



The awakening of interest in husbandry was largely 

 due to the rapid changes in the economic conditions 

 of England which set in about Fitzherbert's time. 



The change in the cost of living directed men's 

 attention to the husbandry and housewiferv recom- 

 mended by Fitzherbert and Tusser. The sma'ller land- 

 owners, who could no longer afford to live on their 

 rents, and who saw that yeomen and tenant farmers 

 were prospering, turned their attention to farming, 

 and agriculture became an important occupation of 

 the educated classes. 



The yeoman and tenant farmer did not ask for text- 

 books on agriculture, but the new agriculturists re- 

 quired information, and thus there arose at the end of 

 the sixteenth century a great demand for books. The 

 booksellers were not slow to make provision for the 

 demand, writers were secured, books were published, 

 and of the more popular many editions were sold. 



Sir Richard Weston, a Surrey landowner, who suc- 

 ceeded to his estates in 1613 and who had travelled in 

 Brabant and Flanders, was the first English agricul- 

 turist to introduce practices approved on the Continent. 

 He grew turnips for feeding cows, a century before 

 the time of Turnip Townshend ; nearly three "hundred 

 years ago he was experimenting, as we are still doing, 

 with clover seed grown in different countries; he had 

 thirty to forty acres of clover sown with barley, and 

 he was inveighing against the sophistication of "out- 



NO. 2243, VOL. go] 



landish " grass seeds and contriving plans for raising 

 pure stocks at home in the approved fashion of to-day. 



It was not only from Brabant and Flanders that 

 travellers brought to England information about 

 foreign agriculture. As one result of the development 

 of commerce voyagers were introducing from distant 

 countries such important plants as the potato and 

 tobacco, and were exciting interest b\' their stories of 

 foreign products. A desire to make experiments with 

 these novelties was but natural, and experimental 

 farming received a powerful impetus from the teach- 

 ings of Francis Bacon, the first exponent of the induc- 

 tive metliod. Having, as he wrote, "taken all know- 

 ledge to be my province," Bacon was himself an 

 amateur farmer, and if he was not a successful one he 

 was at least intent upon introducing methods of " in- 

 dustrious observation and grounded conclusions." It 

 is to Bacon, I think, that Arthur Young alludes in a 

 passage in which he describes a Lord Chancellor of 

 England as having procured and read every published 

 work on husbandry so that he might learn how to 

 farm, and who, having met with ill-success, collected 

 the offending books and lighted a bonfire ! But let us 

 not think lightly of the efforts of this distinguished 

 amateur farmer. The agricultural writers of the suc- 

 ceeding- century, indeed, refer to the influence of Bacon 

 in terms that suggest for agricultural science the origin 

 of the phcenix. We may, at least, agree that about 

 the time of Bacon's bonfire this subject first began 

 to attract the notice of scholars. 



In spite of the political trouble>3 of the second quarter 

 of the seventeenth century, agriculture continued to 

 secure increased attention, for England had learned 

 that in war or peace the food-supply must be cared 

 for, and the importance of corn-growing increased 

 with tlierise in prices. Thus when the Commonwealth 

 was established everything favoured a forward move- 

 ment. At peace and able to return to country pursuits, 

 the combatants. Cavaliers and Roundheads alike, 

 became active improvers. Engineer agriculturists, like 

 Vermuyden, carried out great drainage-works. Many 

 estates had changed hands, and the new owners, not 

 a few of whom, as Harte remarks, " had risen from the 

 plough," were glad to return to it; others were 

 amateur farmers intent on learning. The books of the 

 old and trusted writers, Fitzherbert and Tusser, had 

 been followed by the works of such authors as Norden, 

 Markham, Pla'ttes, and Hartlib. Bacon's teaching 

 emphasised the need for further study and experiment. 

 Behind the political and economic changes were the 

 powerful, moral influences of the Puritan movement; 

 it was at this time and under these conditions that 

 the spirit of the improver, which had animated 

 Columella, appeared among English agriculturists 



The first practical farmer to plead the cause of the 

 improvement of agriculture was Walter Blith, one 

 of Cromwell's sokliers, who is supposed to have been 

 a Yorkshire landowner, but who for some years, at 

 least, was stationed in Ireland. Blith was an ardent 

 agriculturist, who prefaced his practical book, "The 

 English Improver Improved," by seven epistles de- 

 signed to attract the attention of all classes of his 

 fellow-countrymen to agriculture. It is in the epistle 

 to the " Honourable Society of the Houses of the Court 

 and Universities" that chief interest lies for us, for 

 here we find an appeal for the systematic study of 

 agriculture in words that recall the classical writers. 

 Blith showed that agriculture required the close study 

 of the learned, and that the societies {i.e., the Colleges) 

 of the Universities might if they wished do much 

 for its advancement. He adds, "You that have the 

 Thcorick, may easiest discover the Mysteries of the 

 Practick, and from you have I found most encourage- 

 ment to this work, and seen most experiences of good 

 husbandry than from any, and from .v'u too I expect 



