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stirred Evelyn that he wrote: ‘Zo sum up all: If Health be more precious than 
Opinion, Z wish our Admirers of Wines, to the prejudice of Cider, beheld but 
the Cheat themselves; the Sophistications, Transformations, Transmutations, 
Adulterations, Bastardizings, Brewings, Trickings, not to say even Arsenical 
Compassings, of this Sophisticated God they adore; and that they had as true 
an Inspection into those Arcana Lucifera, which the Priests of his Temples (our 
Vintners in their Taverns) do practice ; and then let them drink freely that will. 
Give me good Cider.’ And so apparently said some of his fellows, for the 
Society’s curator, the ‘ingenious Mr. Hooke,’ introduced a new cider-press, and 
Sir Paul Neile, that ‘most worthy member’ Dr. Beale of Yeovil, and others, 
were commanded to discourse on the manufacture of varieties of this puro 
beverage, and to recommend such brews as Pepin-cider adapted for splenetic 
gentlemen, and Gennet-moy] suited to the palates of ladies. 
In other ways the members of the Royal Society encouraged one another in 
making improvements; thus when in 1666 Evelyn’s ‘ worthy friend’ Mr. Hake 
went on a journey, he returned carrying with him—for eight hundred miles— 
some grafts for Evelyn, together with a ‘taste of the most superlative 
perry the world certainly produces.’ It was by means such as these, and ky a 
policy which approved ‘plainness and usefulness’ rather than ‘ niceness and 
curiosity ’ that the newly formed Royal Society commended itself to the country. 
It is indeed probable that agricultural questions occupied much more of the 
attention of the Royal Society in the earlier years of its existence than the printed 
records suggest ; we are told, for example, by the Scottish Improver, ‘ A Lover of 
his Country,’ that one of its most illustrious members, Sir Robert Boyle, was 
an enthusiastic agriculturist; he says:.‘I had the Honour to be known to that 
excellent Person and oft in his Company. He was the greatest Lover of Agri- 
culture I ever knew, and I wonder he never wrote of it. I heard him say, it 
was a Pity there was not Seminaries of that, the most useful, and except 
Pasturage, the most ancient of all Sciences.’ 
Not only were agriculturists attracted by the practical investigations of the 
Royal Society, but impressed by the value of its methods and organisation, and 
Worlidge suggests that nothing would more conduce to improving agriculture 
than the constitution of subordinate Provincial Societies ‘whose principal care 
and office might be to collect all such Observations, Hxperiments, and Improve- 
ments 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 unheeded at the time, for not until 
nearly a century after his suggestion was made did English Agricultural Societies 
begin to appear. A retrograde movement set in soon after the Restoration, 
and although the Government 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 us by Lisle, who wrote the Intro- 
duction 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 conceptions 
of a country life, he draws attention to the fact that in the decadent days of 
Rome luxury increased and husbandry was neglected. He calls on the land- 
owner 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 
advantages 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 punishment, 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 gentle- 
men 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 
