Arthur Young. 
5 
and given to the poor ? He was Prime Minister, and has 50,000/. 
English money per annum.” 
Arthur Young’s earliest contribution to agricultural litera- 
ture was made a year after he commenced farming, and appeared 
as letters in a periodical, with the title of “ Museum Rusticum,” 
which were, by the persuasion of the Rev. Walter Harte, the tutor 
of Mr. Stanhope (Lord Chesterfield’s son), collected under the 
head of “ Sylvrn” as an appendix to the new publication, The 
Farmers Letters , 1767. 
In this year, 1767, he undertook the management of a farm 
of three hundred aci’es at Samford Hall in Essex. Finding it a 
losing affair after a five years’ tenancy, he paid a farmer 100/. 
to take it off his hands, who thereupon realised a fortune on it. 
But during these five years he engaged in various experiments, 
the results of which were carefully noted, and in 1770 they 
were published in two quarto volumes, under the title of A Course 
of Experimental Agriculture. Young was also then engaged 
in writing his Political Essays , which were not, however, pub- 
lished until 1772. Subsequently, acting under the advice of a 
Suffolk bailiff, he took a farm of one hundred acres in Hertford- 
shire. Master and man were both deceived by forming their 
opinion of its quality on a view made in a very favourable 
season. This enterprise was more discouraging than that at 
Samford Hall had been. “ I know not what epithet” (Arthur 
Young says) “ to give this soil. Sterility falls short of the 
idea— a hungry vitriolic gravel. I occupied for nine years the 
jaws of « wolf. A nabob’s fortune would sink in the attempt 
to raise good arable crops upon any extent in such a country. 
... I hardly wonder at a losing account after fate had fixed 
me upon land calculated to swallow without return all that 
folly or imprudence could bestow upon it.” 
In 1773 Arthur Young was elected chairman of the Com- 
mittee of Agriculture in the Society of Arts. 
In the meeting-room of the Society, on the wall behind the 
chair, is a cartoon (by Sir James Barry, R.A.) in which he is 
represented at the extreme left of the picture as receiving a medal 
from Lord Romney, the President of the Society ; and the annals 
of the Society show that he received no less than three of these 
gold medals and one of silver for his achievements in practical 
agriculture. 
About this time, in order to increase his limited means, he 
undertook to report the debates in Parliament for the Morning 
Post. During several years, after these weekly labours he 
walked each Saturday evening to his farm at North Minims, 
6eyenteen miles from London, returning every Monday morn 
