18 Jethro Tull: his Life, Times, and TeactiiiicJ. 
After an absence of three years, spent in observation and 
studies with a view to the practical agi'icultural objects of his 
life, our traveller, in 1714, returned with well-filled note- 
book, from Montpellier in France, " repaired in his constitution, 
but embarrassed in his fortune."' He returned to his Berkshire 
home, Prosperous Farm, a place for ever famous as the home 
of Tull for twenty-six years, from this period to the end of his 
chequered life. 
Tlie rural parish of Shalbourne is situated in the south- 
western corner of the county of Berks ; chiefly in that county, 
but a portion of the parish is in Wiltshire. Partly in both these 
counties, but principally in Berkshire, is the farm on which Tull 
laboured and experimented, in health and sickness, in sunshine 
and in storm, often in need, necessity, and adversity, to perfect 
the Tullian system and to publish its principles to a then world 
which, speaking generally, was ungrateful and heedless, if not 
utterly adverse. This pleasant and secluded spot, in our day 
known chiefly to hunting-men and villagers, has been, as we 
have seen, and probably will be again, the object of many and 
reverential pilgrimages. Tull says of his lone farmhouse : " The 
lands be so remote from all farmers that they cannot be let 
without the house where I live, and which is situate in an air 
that I would not willingly part with." This is Tull's description 
«f the farm " whereon only I have practised horse-hoeing" : — 
" Situated on a little chalk on one side and heath ground on the 
other, the soil is poor and shallow. It is one of the highest 
farms in that part of Berks, and may be seen at ten or twelve 
miles' distance. The bulk of the land is, on the south side, for 
near a mile in length called Bitham Hills, all on flinty chalk ; 
below is a bottom on chalk also, which has lain for many years 
with sainfoin. On the west side all the land is called East Hills. 
On the north-west is a high field called Cook's Hill, the only one 
not on chalk, a poor, wet, spewy soil. The soil generally is \oo 
light and too shallow to produce a tolerable crop of beans. This 
farm was made out of the skirts of others ; great part was a 
sheep down with a full reputation of poverty." 
Arthur Young's " pilgrimage " to '' Prosperous " was in 1 79-1, 
when, covered with glazed tiles of home manufacture, the old 
house still existed ; he calls it a " wretched hovel." Arthur 
Young, after careful inspection, considered that the description 
of his farm by Tull was true and just. " Here it w.'is," he adds, 
" Tull practised and registered that drill-culture which has been 
the origin of so many experiments, and the basis of so many 
publications in almost every language in Europe."' In the 
' His own words; Annals Agric. v, 23, 172. 
