Jethro TuU : his Life, Times, and Teaching. 27 
Lord Ducie, wlio, we are told, " accompanied " Tull in his 
operations — that is to say, the noble Lord's operations kept pace 
with TuU's — is twice and very suggestively mentioned in the 
Horse-hoeing Husbandry Bool:. In reply to critics, Tull says : 
" Can it be reasonably believed that a person of his Lordship's 
known good sense and judgment would have continued the 
practice of a scheme so many yeai'S and annually increased it, 
unless he had seen it succeed, or if upon the whole he had been 
a loser by it ? I believe my Lord might be two or three 
thousand pounds out of pocket or more, but most of this money 
was expended upon building walls, making new ways, inclosing 
commons and common-fields, planting miles of quick hedges, and 
constructing houses and farm-buildings. I never heard there 
was any loss by the husbandry, but the contrary. It would be 
the highest reflection upon a person of his Lordship's honour 
and integrity to imagine he would approve a scheme on which 
he had observed for many years, if he had not been convinced 
by his own knowledge and experience that it was just." 
And again an instance occurred in the case of a nobleman 
well skilled in agriculture, presumably Lord Ducie. He had two 
arable estates. On that near home Tull's four-coultered ploughs 
had been used with success. Some, therefore, were sent to the 
other and distant estate. On a subsequent visit it was found not 
one furrow had been ploughed with them. Bailiffs, steward, 
servants, and all, said the ploughs might be all very well on the 
one estate ; yet the land was different, and they were no use 
here. No argument of my Lord's prevailed ; so at last he went 
into the field himself, set the coulters, threw off his coat — and 
ensigns of honour — and ploughed a whole land, and so shamed 
the ploughmen that they condescended to plough well with the 
four-coultered ploughs. The moral is grandly Tullian — no new 
implement can expect fair play when the master is taught by 
servants. 
The following extract from Lord Cathcart's Diary appro- 
priately closes his agricultural year, 1730. December 2: 
" I went this morning to teach Sir William Strickland and his 
manager how to burn clay ; " and again, December 4 : "I stayed at 
home for a long conference with Sir William Strickland's agent : 
I explained to him many things concerning agriculture of which 
he was ignorant, and also my system of accounts, with which he 
was greatly pleased." 
The year of grace 1731 saw the commencement of the 
publication in London of Tull's magnum opus, in the shape 
of his Specimen of a Worli. on Horse-hoeing Husbandry, in 
quarto — five chapters of the afterwards completed book; this, 
