20 
Jeihro Tail: his Life, tinges, and Teachinj. 
Tail's ploughs and other implements were in principle and iri 
effect the rude forerunners of the perfected and world-famed 
British implements of our own day ; so also his scrupulously 
clean husbandry, with drilling and horse-hoeing, with deep and 
constant tillage, is inseparably associated with the modern and 
most improved principles of the art of agriculture. 
The exact details of TuU's practice are now subjects only ot 
historical, not of practical, interest. The curious reader is referred 
to his book, in which every detail is amply set forth ; the illus- 
trations of the implements invented and used ai'e excellent. The 
instinct of true genius in poor, worn-out, much-abused Tull was 
prophetic, and in the faith thus modestly and pathetically set 
forth he died: — "Some, allowed as good judges, have upon a 
full view and examination of my practice, declared their opinion 
that it would one day become the general husbandry of England." 
That the Scotch farmers were the first to discover the merits 
of TuU's system is a fact recorded by Loudon. Boswell mentions, 
in his Life of Johnson, that in 1773, at Kasey, in the Hebrides, 
the gi'eat man told us that Dr. Campbell called on him, and they 
talked of TuU's husbandry. Campbell said something, and Dr. 
Johnson disputed it. " Come," said Dr. Campbell, " we do not 
want to get the better of one another, we want to increase each 
other's ideas." Dr. Johnson took it in good part, and the con- 
versation went on coolly and instructively. Northumberland 
in 1780 ' borrowed the system from Scotland, and it gradually 
worked its way southward. The Tullian system, as has been 
said, was first taken up by certain of the great landowners of 
England — as, for example, Lord Ducie ^ and Lord Halifax ^ — and 
afterwards with great zeal by the Society of Improvers in the 
Knowledge of Agi'iculture in Scotland, a Society founded in July 
1723; it lived a short but invaluable life of twenty-two years, 
and perished in 1715, during the distractions of the then civil 
war. During the whole of its life, Mr. Hope of Rankielor, "the 
last President of the Society, was the life and soul of the Society 
in Scotland : a man, as Chambers well saj'S,'* who deserves to be 
better remembered than he is. He was the intimate friend and 
of the world, and I am able to say that the average yield is less than it is at 
the present time upon my permanent wheat land, after more than sixty years 
absohitely without manure. Here we liave the result of TuU's three great 
principles — drilling, reduction of seed, and absence of weed. If he were alive 
now and were writing for the agriculture of the world, he would, I think, be , 
quite justified in saying everything he said in regard to cleanliness and 
manure." — C. 
' Korthum'berland Sii/rvey, p. 100 : Cyclo. Brit. vol. vi. 
* Matthew-Ducie Moreton, created Lord Ducie, &c., 1720. Died 1733. 
* George Montague. Earl of Halifax, K B, Died 1739, 
* Dom, An, Scot., iii. 4S5. 
