267 
Wolds of Lincolnshire from Barton to Spilsby, when Arthur 
Young wrote his survey, consisted of mere wastes, occupied by 
rabbit warrens. Could he now revisit these Wolds, he would 
hardly recognize a single feature of their former state. The 
warrens have disappeared, and in their stead are some of the 
finest farms and best manao^ed land in Eno^land. In 1727, a 
CO ^ 
field of eight acres sown with wheat in the vicinity of Edin- 
burgh, was reckoned so great a curiosity, that it excited the 
attention of the whole neighbourhood, and numbers of per- 
sons came from a distance to see it ! In 1763 (seventy-eight 
years ago) agriculture almost every where in Scotland was in 
the most barbarous state imaginable. Maxwell states that 
there was no rotation of crops ; fallows were unknown except 
in one or two counties. Neither turnips, clover, nor potatoes 
had been so much as heard of, but corn followed corn in an 
unbroken series, and, as might be expected, the returns were 
only about three times the quantity of seed sown. Even in East 
Lothian, so late as 1757, neither turnips, potatoes, nor any 
cultivated herbage, formed any part of the system. The 
famous Lord Stair first introduced turnip culture into 
Scotland; but Dawson, of Frogden, commenced raising 
them on a large scale in 1763, and may thus be con- 
sidered the real father of the improved Scotch husbandry; 
so that the grand improvement in modern agriculture 
— that by which it is distinguished from the old — is 
the universal introduction and superior management of green 
crops. But further, in what particular is the agriculture of 
Belgium, which has been celebrated for these six hundred 
years, and now termed the garden of Europe, at the present 
time so vastly superior to that of England and Scotland ? 
How is it that the Netherlands,* being the most densely 
peopled country upan the face of the earth, can feed her own 
* Population — In Holland 224 on the square mile. 
„ Great Britain 152 ditto — Facts, by Sir R. Phillips, p. 750. 
China Ml AMio—Neuhoff's Travek. 
