718 TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION M. 
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 
pursued it as they ought, it would be so far from excluding 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 contemporary of Evelyn’s, started a periodical publication, 
‘Houghton’s Letters,’ but it soon ceased. A generation 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 advancement of useful knowledge.’ 
Testimony to the activity of the Royal Society at this period is also to be 
found in a work on ‘ Curiosities of Nature and Art in Agriculture and Garden- 
ing,’ a translation from the French of the Abbot de Vallemont by Bishop 
William Fleetwood, published anonymously in 1707; this work contains the 
passage ‘The Royal Society of Hngland 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 attention of the Royal Society. Robert Ball and 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 Burgoyne’s 
Fife and the other things ‘not yet heard of,’ that are associated with agri- 
culture 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 imita- 
tion, laid out parks and parterres. This demand gave opportunity to the profes- 
sional gardener, and the garden-designer and. nurseryman started business. It 
likewise gave authors their opportunity, and that it was well taken advantage of 
is proved by the popularity of Miller’s Gardeners’ Dictionary written by the 
Gardener of the Botanic Gardens at Chelsea, and dedicated to Sir Hans Sloane, 
President, and to the Fellows of the Royal Society. 
A second writer on gardening of this period, the Reverend John Laurence, of 
Bishop Weremouth, Durham, may be mentioned, for he was also one of the 
chief agricultural writers of the first half of the eighteenth century. In 1726 
he published a large folio work entitled ‘A New System of Agriculture.’ This 
book marks the time when what the author calls the ‘Spirit of Gardening’ 
appeared, and it proves that gardening was very popular with the landed and 
educated classes for some years before the revival in agriculture began. Laurence 
refers, as Lisle did a few years before, to the lack of interest in husbandry, and re- 
marks : ‘If Gentlemen could persuade themselves to cast their Estates into Beauty 
and Order, they would quickly experience it the noblest Exercise and greatest 
Delight.” Every age, he remarks, has its own amusements, ‘ This Age, it is plain, 
seems to taste and relish everything new on the Subject of vegetable Nature.’ He 
attributes the ‘relish’ not merely to progress in the art of gardening, fostered 
by nobles and statesmen, but to the Royal Society—of whom he says that their 
Philosophical Transactions ‘are standing Memoirs of the Zeal and Activity of 
many Persons of Quality and Learning,’ whose ‘ Discourses and Experiments’ 
have ‘advanced much Light in the Art of Husbandry.’ Incidentally he refers 
to the condition of the North of England, and says that the county of Durham 
