7oG TIistory of the Enylviti' Landed Interest. 
Mr. Gamier continues ; “ Fallow, rotation, pickling, cleaning, 
weeds, bird-scaring are all advocated by Virgil with the skill and 
accuracy of a Cirencester College professor.” Further, for ex- 
ample, Columella lays down a principle applicable in our day : the 
farm, he says, ought to be weaker than the farmer. Old Cato 
was great in this way — asked who was the best farmer (?), he 
answered a good grazier, and next (?) a middling grazier, and 
after (?) a bad grazier ! I repeat further what old Cato said, as 
it maybe a word in season : “ There is much difficulty in speak- 
ing to the belly, because it has no ears.” 
Before turning to the Anglo-Saxon period I would observe 
that Mr. Gamier says, “ Barnaby Googe’s allusion, 1577, to 
a car armed with sharp sickles is the first mention of the 
mechanism of a reai^ing machine.” I find, however, amongst 
my old notes from Pliny, and Adams’ Antiquities, it is stated 
that “ the Gauls reaped corn with a machine drawn by two 
horses ; the heads were cut off to be gathered mechanically in 
a bag.” 
I’lie Anglo-Saxon period is chiefly interesting as it presents 
to us Nature in her own vast crucible mixing together human 
elements to fuse them into an amalgam of nations destined with 
the fire of old Rome to form in the distant future a conquering, 
colonising, and imperial race, to occupy and to people the vacant 
or politically chaotic regions of the earth. But logically in the 
Anglo-Saxon period and, following Mr. Gamier, a word should 
be said about tithe. According to that eminent divine. Dr. 
Paley, tithes were originally voluntary, then compulsoiy, and 
subsequently applied by Papal dictation ; Paley was in the last 
century so far in advance of his day as to say this ecclesiastical 
impost “ born of savage times and barter should be converted 
into corn rents.” Tithe in kind, now merely a subject of his- 
torical interest, was an impost barbarous in its inception, hateful 
in its imposition, and disastrous in its consequences. In the 
matter of tithe as in other things the Scotch agiicultural history 
of the last century is an invaluable search light to be employed 
in the elucidation of English agricultural history. In our day 
there is still in regard to the Tithe rent-charge a crying want, 
and if we could possibly have a Government — 
“ Wliere none were for a party, 
And all were for the State,” 
that crying want would immediately be satisfied, provision should 
1)6 made for the effectual, speedy, and equitable redemption 
of tithe. 
One huge grand figure dominates the Norman period ; the 
