2 
Jethro Tall : his Life, Times, and Teaching. 
or a Treatise on the Principles of Tillage and Vegetation, wherein 
is taught a Method of introducing a sort of Vineyard Culture into 
the Cornfields, in order to increase their Product and diminish 
the Common Expense. The principles formulated in this famous 
book, ultimately — but step by stop and by very slow degrees — revo- 
lutionised Bi'itish agriculture. Tull invented the drill ; but our 
admiration and gratitude are chiefly due to him because of the 
reasons which he gave us for the utility of his undoubted inven- 
tion of that now universally employed implement. 
Throughout one hundred and fifty years of neglect and com- 
parative obscurity the true light and tradition have been handed 
down undimmed and undiminished by the Levitic hands of a 
real agricultural succession of scholars and authors. They knew 
full well that to study Tull's book is to strip many an early agricul- 
tui'al philosopher of his borrowed plumes. Twenty-four years 
after Tull's death it was said by the personal friend and neigh- 
bour ' who painted his original biographical portrait, that Tull was 
the first Englishman, perhaps the first writer ancient or modern, 
who has attempted with any tolerable degree of success to 
reduce the art of agriculture to certain and uniform principles ; 
and it must be acknowledged that he has done more towards 
establishing a rational and practical method of husbandry than 
all the writers who have gone before him. Again, thirty years 
after, a famous pilgrimage was made by Arthur Young. " I 
visited," said the well-known writer, " Prosperous Farm, which 
the celebrated Jethro Tull has made for ever famous by a work 
which will unquestionably carry his name to the latest posterity." 
Twenty-seven years again pass and an agricultural author,^ 
whose Rural Rides and other writings are, in the literature of 
our country, models of nervous English, visited Prosperous. 
He has written thus : — 
" I was born and bred amongst affairs of gardening and 
farming, and I was well read, but till I read Tull I knew 
nothing of principles. Here are, in fact, all the whole code 
of the principles of vegetation and of general application, 
whether in the cornfields, the pastures, the gardens, the cop- 
pices, the woods, and the forests." 
And again ho says with characteristic homespun eloquence : 
— " Just indignation is excited when we remember that Tull's 
ideas have been pillaged by a whole gang and succession of 
' D. Y., of Hungerford, in the. Gent. Mag. of 1701. This able gentleman 
probably belonged to tlie Yorko family ; the surname constantly occurs in the 
Parish ]lcgistcrs, but diligent senrch so far has failed to connect the surnam.e 
with a Christian name of which the initial is D. 
' Cobbett. 
