PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. als 
references of Xenophon to the science of husbandry 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 hia 
Eleventh Book, with its calendar 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. 
These changes we cannot now discuss, but their magnitude may be indicated 
by the rise in price of the single staple, wheat. According to Thorold Rogers, 
the average price between 1400 and 1540 was 5s. 113d., the decennial average for 
the last four decades being 5s. 54d., 6s. 83d., 7s. 6d. and 7s. 83d. Between 
1541 and 1582 the average price was 13s. 10}d., and 16s. 8d. for the last twelve 
years of this period. Between 1583 and 1642 the average price rose to 36s. 9d. In 
particular years high prices were reached, and in 1596 and 1597 Fleetwood 
chronicles prices of from 80s. to 104s. per quarter. 
The change in the cost of living directed men’s attention to the husbandry 
and housewifery recommended by Fitzherbert and Tusser. The smaller 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 agri- 
culture 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 required 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. 
Even such a ready writer and successful adapter of other men’s books as 
Gervase Markham got more work than he could do. His book on live-stock was 
bought up so freely that in 1617 he resolved to write no more on this subject, 
and the public demand was satisfied by the issue of reprints. His ‘ Farewell to 
Husbandry,’ too, was reprinted in many forms. My copy, for example, is a 
fourth revision printed by William Wilson for John Harison in 1649, while the 
copy figured in MacDonald’s ‘ Agricultural Writers’ is also a fourth revision, with 
an almost identical title-page, but printed by Edward Griffin for John Harison 
in 1638. 
At the end of the sixteenth century the practice of continental farming began 
to attract attention in England, and a further proof of the demand for informa- 
tion which then existed was the translation in 1600 of ‘ Maison Rustique,’ a French 
work by two doctors of medicine, Charles Stevens and John Liebault. This 
volume, in its English form known as the ‘ Countrie Farme,’ contains seven books 
and nine hundred quarto pages. It is intended to be a complete guide for 
residents in the country, and deals with everything that the landowner wants to 
know, from the care of his health to forecasting the weather. The work is 
interesting in other ways than as an indication of the new appetite for books. 
As in Heresbach’s works, translated by Barnaby Googe in 1677, we find in the 
‘Countrie Farme’ the acknowledged influence of the ancients. Reference is 
made to the Greek writings of Hesiod, to Mago of Carthage, and to the high 
esteem in which the Latin works of Columella, Varro, and Cato were held; we 
are informed that French translations of the works of the three last-named were 
in existence in 1582. 
The English agriculturists of the sixteenth century went abroad for more 
than books. Gerarde, who like others of his profession deserted medicine to the 
great advantage of botany, had obtained a number of foreign plants for his col- 
lections. From the gardener, too, England learned of the skill of the Flemings, 
and would gladly have copied their practice. But the Flemings were too busy 
to write books; so Englishmen went to see for themselves how and why they 
prospered. 
Sir Richard Weston, a Surrey landowner, who succeeded to his estates in 
1613 and who had travelled in Brabant and Flanders, was the first English 
agriculturist 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 
