J'ethro Tull : his Life, Times, and Teaching, 35 
purely mechanical action. A very recent writer in a work of 
authority ' thus sums the Tullian theory and with this preface : 
" Tull studied the principle of growth in plants, and with extra- 
ordinary, perhaps with unparalleled, attention to surrounding 
details. The food of plants — in his view — consists of minute 
particles of earth, and consequently the more worked and stirred 
the more is there food range for roots. Hence rows and drills 
wide apart, and tillage of intervals by plough and hoe and until 
near maturity." 
If the spirits ot just men made perfect could look down 
upon sublunary affairs, how the shade of Tull would rejoice in 
the chemical science of our day ! This recent experiment would 
just be after his own heart : — peas, vetches, clover and lupins 
grown in sterilised sand. The plants cannot thrive — dwindle — 
there is no nitrogen beyond that in the seed. Add a little liquid 
extract of good soil, and watch the transformation : these same 
plants shoot out and flourish exceedingly. How a recent paper 
in the Transactions and Proceedings of the Royal Society 
on the sources of nitrogen in vegetation^ would open his 
eyes to so much that was hidden and obscure ! No word 
but amazement would describe his attitude on learning that 
it is supposed there are little germs essential to vegetation, 
and microbes in the soil which require to rouse them into 
vigorous action, aeration, warmth, and peculiar soil, or, in other 
words, pulverisation, tillage, draining, and lime. And further, 
that it is inferred each plant has its own familiar little microbe, 
to minister to its special wants and tastes, and that the little 
special microbe helps leguminous plants to obtain nitrogen 
directly from the atmosphere. But enough; in our day, in the 
flowing tide of modern science, outsiders are soon beyond their 
depth, struggling vainly with advancing waves and sliouting to 
the humane man of science for essential assistance. 
Usually the inertia of good people discourages more than 
the opposition of the bad. This was not so in the case of Tull. 
Acrimonious Grub Street criticism — " their dirty wit " — seemed 
to have scorched and burnt up his sensitive nature ; but all the 
same, it never prevented his giving a Eowland for an Oliver! 
Difficulties of communication and a restricted newspaper press 
in his day, probably by concentration, rendered the venom of 
unjust criticism intensely venomous, and " Spit forth " to an 
extent not easily appreciated in our time, when writers and 
' Cyclo. Brit. 
Trans. B. Soc. V. 180 ; Proceedings R. Soc. v. i7, Hiv John Lawcs and 
Dr. Gilbert. 
D 2 
