2^8 



NATURE 



[October 24, 1912 



principal care and office might he to collect all such 

 Observations, Experiments, and Improvements they 

 find within their Province . . . which of necessity 

 must abundantly improve Science and Art and 

 advance Agriculture and the Manufactures." 



The proposal made by Worlidge was uniieeded at 

 the time, for not until nearly a century after his 

 suggestion was made did English agricultural socie- 

 ties begin to appear. A retrograde movement set in 

 soon after the Restoration, and although the Govern- 

 ment sought to foster improvements and passed 

 several Acts with the object of stimulating farming, 

 Harte tells us that a " total change of things, as well 

 as the very cast and manner of thinking, joined with 

 immoral dissipation, and a false aversion to what had 

 been the object and care of mean despised persons, 

 soon brought the culture of the earth into disrepute 

 with the nobility and gentry." 



An insight into the conditions of the last quarter 

 of the seventeenth century and the first quarter of 

 the eighteenth is given u's by Lisle, who wrote the 

 introduction to his " Observations on Husbandry " in 

 1713. He begins by remarking that it is one of the 

 misfortunes of the age that it lacks honourable con- 

 ceptions of a country life; he directs attention to the 

 fact that in the decadent days of Rome luxury in- 

 creased and husbandry was neglected. He calls on 

 the landowner to look round him and see how many 

 fine estates are daily mortgaged or sold, "and how 

 many _ antient and noble families destroyed by the 

 pernicious and almost epidemic turn to idleness and 

 extravagance." He discusses at length the advant- 

 ages of an agricultural career, and "recommends it 

 as a profession for the eldest sons of gentlemen, who 

 might regard it as "a school of profit and education; 

 whereas," he continues, " it is rather looked on as 

 a purgatory for the disobedient, a scene of punish- 

 ment, to which a son, who answers not his father's 

 expectations, is to be abandoned; or a condition of 

 life of which none would make choice, but such whom 

 fortune has not in other respects favoured. If the 

 country gentlemen therefore frequently consist of 

 persons who are either rusticated by their parents in 

 anger, or who, making a virtue of necessity, settle 

 on their estates with aversion or indifference, it is no 

 wonder the comedians exhibit them on our stage in 

 so despicable and ridiculous a figure ; but this is the 

 fault of the persons and not. of the art. Were they 

 properly initiated in the study of Agriculture, and pur- 

 sued it as they ought, it would be so far from ex- 

 cluding them from useful knowledge, and bringing 

 them into contempt, that I may venture to assert 

 they would find it the best school of education, and 

 the fittest to prepare them for the service of their 

 country in the two houses of parliament of Great 

 Britain." 



Such were the dispiriting social conditions with 

 which the successors of Evelyn in the Royal Society 

 had to contend. The agricultural experiments of the 

 society therefore attracted but little attention outside 

 the ranks of the curious. Houghton, a contem- 

 porary of Evelyn's, started a periodical publication, 

 Houghton's Letters, but it soon ceased. A genera- 

 tion later, and about the period to which Lisle refers 

 in the above quotation, a work on husbandry was 

 written by a fellow, John Mortimer. It is dedicated 

 to the society, "to whose encouragement, inquiries, 

 and direction it owes its birth." Special thanks are 

 given to another fellow, Dr. Sloane, who assisted the 

 author, and " has greatly contributed to the advance- 

 ment of useful knowledge." 



Testimony to the activity of the Royal Society at 

 this period is also to be found in a work on " Curiosi- 

 ties of Nature and .Art in Agriculture and Gardening," 

 XO. 2243, VOL. 90] 



a translation from the French of the .\bbot de Valle- 

 mont by Bishop William Fleetwood, published 

 anonymously in 1707 ; this work contains the 

 passage : " The Royal Society of England who are 

 so zealous for the Perfection of Agriculture and 

 Gardening, have apply 'd themselves with great Care 

 to find out the true way to make Salt-petre, which 

 they likewise allow to be the chief Promoter of the 

 Vegetation of Plants." 



About this time botanical questions of much 

 interest to agriculturists were occupying the atten- 

 tion of the Royal Society. Robert Balland Samuel 

 Moreland were investigating reproduction in plants, 

 and a few years later Richard Bradley, another 

 fellow, professor of botany at Cambridge," but more 

 of an agriculturist than a botanist, was explaining 

 how, by cross-breeding, " such rare kinds of plants 

 as have not yet been heard of " may be produced. 

 He refers specifically to a cross between a carnation 

 and a sweet-william, but by inference to Burgovne's 

 Fife and the other things "not yet heard of " that 

 are associated with agriculture and botany in the 

 Cambridge of to-day. 



Various causes, among which the influence of 

 fellows of the Royal Society must be given an 

 important place, led the landowners and the educated 

 classes of England again to turn their attention to 

 agriculture about the beginning of George II. 's 

 reign. The revival was associated with and 

 followed, as it has in recent time, a development in 

 gardening. William and Mary were patrons of 

 horticulture, they greatly improved the Royal 

 gardens, and the nobility, in imitation, laid out parks 

 and parterres. 



A writer on agriculture and gardening of this 

 period, the Rev. John Laurence, of Bishop Were- 

 mouth, Durham, attributes the revival, not merely to 

 progress in the art of gardening, fostered by nobles 

 •iiid statesmen, but to the Royal Society — of which 

 he savs that its Philosophical Transactions "are 

 standing Memoirs of the Zeal and .Activity of many 

 Persons of Quality and Learning," whose "Dis- 

 courses and Experiments" have "advanced much 

 Light in the .-\rt of Husbandry." 



Although for seventy years after its formation, and 

 throughout a period during which agriculture was 

 neglected by the landed classes, the Royal Society did 

 much to keep alive the spirit of the improver, the 

 unfortunate apathy of the agriculturist prevented that 

 progress which appeared to be imminent when John 

 Evelyn wrote his " Pomona." It was not possible for 

 a learned society in London to investigate agricultural 

 questions in the absence of the scientific agriculturist 

 himself ; subjects of agricultural interest were there- 

 fore discussed chiefly from a theoretical point of view, 

 and, neglecting the teachings of Bacon and the 

 example of Evelyn, there arose that use of the deduc- 

 tive method which in the past two centuries has done 

 so much to hinder the progress of agricultural science. 



The first to show up the fallacy of the deductive 

 method in studying this subject was Jethro Tull, who, 

 though he himself fell into the errors which he con- 

 demned, was, in his understanding of the true relation- 

 ships of science and practice, far ahead of any of his 

 contemporaries. A lawyer by training, he probably 

 took to agriculture because of his poor health. He 

 worked at it for twenty years before he was induced 

 to set out his views in writing, and it was years after 

 he began farming before he read anything on the 

 subject. Dissatisfied w'ith the practice of his times, 

 he set himself to reason out new methods and to make 

 experiments. He got suggestions from foreign travel; 

 he tells us, for example, that the first hint of the value 

 of horse-hoeing husbandry was derived from the 



