October 24, 19 12] 



NATURE 



:39 



ploughed vineyards of France ; but he was careful to 

 submit his ideas to the test of experiment before he 

 adopted them in farm practice. His temper, which, 

 if one may judge from his references to his labourers, 

 was far from serene, was much tried by his con- 

 troversies with Equivocus, and his criticisms of the 

 writers and scientilic men of the preceding half-century 

 are severe. He remarks, for example, on the super- 

 ficial knowledge of agriculture shown by " Mr. Laur- 

 ence, a divine; Mr. Bradley, an academic; Dr. Wood- 

 ward, a Physician ; Mr. Houghton, an Apothecary ; 

 these for want of practice could not have the true 

 theory ; and the writers who are acquainted with the 

 common practice, as Mr. Mortimer (whether for want 

 of leisure, or not being qualified, I do not know) have 

 said very little of any theory." He freely criticised 

 the writings even of "Mr. Boyle" and of that 

 '"miracle of a man Sir Isaac Xewton," and in a 

 characteristic sentence he remarks : " From Sir Isaac's 

 transmutation arguments we may learn that a man 

 never ought to depend entirely upon his own for sup- 

 port of his own hypothesis." An admirable sentiment 

 which I am afraid that TuU himself, and many another 

 agriculturist since his time, failed to lay to heart. 

 Jethro Tull's great work was published two gene- 

 rations after Walter Blith first endeavoured to awaken 

 I he spirit of the improver in English farmers. 

 Throughout this period not much progress had been 

 made, but a change was at hand. When in 1730 

 Turnip Townshend left politics and went down to 

 Norfolk to farm his estate, the tide had turned, and 

 henceforward throughout the eighteenth century there 

 was a rapid improvement in the practice of English 

 agriculture. Of these developments no small share 

 may be attributed to the influence exercised by the 

 Royal Society during the first seventy years of its 

 existence. 



The agriculture of Scotland had not shared in the 

 revival due to the work and writings of the English 

 improvers, and was in a very backward . state in the 

 middle of the seventeenth century. Its condition is 

 indicated by John Ray, who, in 1661, some months 

 before the Royal Society received its charter, set out 

 from Cambridge to spend the Long Vacation in a 

 Scottish tour. He crossed the Tweed on August 16, 

 and proceeded from Berwick, via Dunbar, to Edin- 

 burgh. His first day's journal gives us his impressions 

 of what is now, and probably was then, one of the 

 foremost agricultural districts in Scotland. "The 

 ground in the valleys and plains bears good corn," 

 he says, but " the people seem to be verv lazy, at 

 least the men." Scottish women, he writes, "are not 

 very cleanly in their houses, and but sluttish in dress- 

 ing their meat." "They have neither good bread, 

 cheese, or drink. They cannot make them, nor will 

 they learn. Their butter is indifferent, and one would 

 wonder how they contrive to make it so bad." 



After the LTnion Scotchmen in increasing numbers 

 took the high road to London, and at first with much 

 less profit to themselves than those acquainted with 

 the Scot in modern times might suppose. As a result 

 of social intercourse, the upper classes began to copy 

 the manners and customs of their rich English neigh- 

 bours, and prices and the cost of living rose rapidly. 

 These economic changes, as in England a century 

 before, turned the attention of landowners to the im- 

 provement of their estates; but as the Scottish laird 

 of the beginning of the eighteenth centurv did not 

 take readily to farming, a few of the more enlightened 

 men among them saw that if improvements were to 

 be made special measures were necessary. Impressed 

 by the usefulness of the Royal Society, these re- ! 

 formers conceived the idea of establishing an Agricul- ' 

 tural Society in Scotland. This societv, which met 1 



NO. 2243, VOL. go] 



for the first time in Edinburgli on June S, I/23, and 

 adopted the name of "The Honourable the Society of 

 Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture in Scot- 

 land," was the first association to be formed for the 

 express purpose of promoting agriculture. Some 

 account of its work is given in its Lransactions, pub- 

 lished twenty years later, but for a contemporary 

 view of the problems which engaged the society's 

 attention we must go to a book published in Edin- 

 burgh in 1729, under the title of " .'\n Essay on Ways 

 and Means for Inclosing, Fallowing, Planting, &c., 

 Scotland, and that in Sixteen Years at farthest, by a 

 Lover of his Country." 



Of all old books on agriculture this is, to me, the 

 most interesting. The anonymous writer is believed 

 to have been Brigadier-General Mackintosh of Bor- 

 lum, one of the rebel leaders of 1715, who fell into 

 tlie hands of the English at Preston, was imprisoned 

 in Newgate, and sentenced to death. But this High- 

 lander was not to be held by English gaolers. With 

 some of his comrades he overpowered the prison guard 

 and made good his escape; recaptured in 1719, he 

 spent the rest of his life in prison. The essay was 

 written, its author informs us, in "my Hermitage" 

 — a cell in Edinburgh Castle — and the writer remarks 

 that he can give no better reason for his work " tlian 

 other Enthusiasts do, the Spirit moves me." 



The prisoner employed his enforced leisure to great 

 advantage. He displays more familiarity with the 

 classical authors than any of his predecessors, or for 

 that matter than any of his successors, except Harte 

 and Adam Dickson, and he had obviously studied all 

 the more important works published in England in 

 the previous century. He argues that since the Union, 

 Scotland had not made progress, and that, while 

 extravagance had spread and necessaries greatly in- 

 creased in cost, no attempt had been made to learn 

 good rural economy from the English. He points out 

 that until they improve their estates Scottish lairds 

 cannot hope to emulate English landowners. He 

 counsels fallowing and inclosing, and recommends 

 that skilled English labourers should be brought to 

 teach English methods. He indicates where 

 the best workmen might be obtained. Men 

 from Devonshire for denshiring (paring and burning) ; 

 men from Cambridgeshire for draining ; men from 

 Hertfordshire for ploughing ; from Hereford for fruit 

 planting ; and from Shropshire for hedging. He esti- 

 mates that six hundred and forty men would be 

 required for Scotland. A "regimental number," he 

 facetiously remarks, but a welcome regiment, for they 

 would be armed only with spade and shovel ! He 

 would apportion a group of these men to every county 

 in Scotland and place them under the guidance of 

 county supervisors. "And if I might have my wish," 

 he says, " we should not go on by Halfs, and all 

 Europe should be quickly disabused of the Reproach 

 they load us with of Idleness and Poverty." In another 

 passage he prophesies that ''Scotland from one of 

 the poorest, ugliest, and most barren Countries of 

 Europe, is, in a very few Years, become one of the 

 richest, most beautiful and fertile Nations of it," and 

 who would now assert that the old rebel's prophecy 

 has not been fulfilled? 



As already mentioned, the Society of Improvers was 

 constituted at a meeting held on June S, 1723. A 

 council of twenty-five members was elected, the council 

 was divided up into subcommittees, each of which was 

 charged with the care of a special branch of agricul- 

 ture ; the rules set out that the members of com- 

 mittees were to " chuse different subjects in Agricul- 

 ture and mark down their thoughts thereon in writ- 

 ing." Thev were also to correspond with the most 

 intelligent agriculturists all over the country and to 

 endeavour to get small local societies formed. The 



