418 
tinue so, unless other causes should operate to make it dearer; as the foreign 
growers are convinced that we can supply ourselves with any quantity, and 
of the best kind, whenever, by an advance of the price, the profits are found 
sufficient to engage the attention of our husbandmen. 
A sudden fall however in the price, although it be advantageous to the 
manufacturer, is a great injury, if not ruin, to the grower, who has been at 
considerable expense in raising and preparing it. Accordingly Air. Young, 
in 17 84, says, it was with great regret I found, that the extraordinary fall 
in the price of Madder of cent, per cent, had totally destroyed all the plan¬ 
tations, which were once so flourishing in the neighbourhood of Feversham 
in Kent; and was exceedingly concerned to hear, that Mr. Crowe, who had 
gone greater lengths, and made more spirited exertions in that culture, than 
any other man in England, had suffered very deeply in his property, by that 
ruinous decline.* 
Air. Young, in his tour through the East of England, made in the, year 
1770, gives a detailed account of the experiments of John Arbuthnot, Esq. 
of Ravensbury, on the subject of Madder, begun in the year 1^65 ; by which 
it appears that a clear profit of seven guineas an acre was made by it, and 
that instead of exhausting, it ameliorates and cleans the soil to a great degree. 
But if fourteen years after this time, Air. Crowe was obliged to give up the 
culture of Madder, it is probable that Air. Arbuthnot did not find it so pro- 
Stable as it was at first, when Aladder sold for four pounds ten shillings the 
hundred weight. 
If the cultivation of Madder is carried on properly in England, it will 
employ a great number of hands from the time harvest is over, till the spring 
of the year, which is generally a dead time for labourers, and hereby the 
parishes may be eased of the poor’s rate, which is a consideration worthy of 
public attention. 
Mr. Arbuthnot has shown by repeated experiments on Madder, that it 
may be cultivated profitably on soils not of extraordinary natural fertility: 
that good husbandry, with rich manuring will be sufficient to ensure a crop; 
consequently that the Aladder culture may be extended over most parts of 
the kingdom, except on poor, stony or clayey soils: that the profit made 
by an application of the land during three years, is superior to that of four; 
■* Annals, Vol. II. p. 69 . 
