had been begun ten years before and been temporarily silenced,
broke out more violently than ever. Agricola was the first
to teach the views which Luther was the first to stigmatize
by the now well-known name Antinomian (q.v.), maintaining
that while the unregenerate were still under the Mosaic
law, Christians were entirely free from it, being under
the gospel alone. In consequence of the bitter controversy
with Luther that resulted, Agricola in 1540 left Wittenberg
secretly for Berlin, where he published a letter addressed
to the elector of Saxony, which was generally interpreted
as a recantation of his obnoxious views. Luther, however,
seems not to have so accepted it, and Agricola remained at
Berlin. The elector Joachim II. of Brandenburg, having taken
him into his favour, appointed him court preacher and general
superintendent. He held both offices until his death in 1566,
and his career in Brandenburg was one of great activity and
influence. Along with Julius von Pflug, bishop of Naumburg-Zeitz,
and Michael Helding, titular bishop of Sidon. he prepared
the Augsburg Interim of 1548. He endeavoured in vain to
appease the Adiaphoristic controversy (see ADIAPHORISTS.)
He died during an epidemic of plague on the 22nd of September
1566. Agricola wrote a number of theological works which
are now of little interest. He was the first to make a
collection of German proverbs which he illustrated with a
commentary. The most complete edition, which contains
seven hundred and fifty proverbs, is that published at
Wittenberg in 1592; a modern one is that of Latendorf, 1862.
See Cordes, Joh. Agricola's Schriften moglichst
verzeichnet (Altona, 1817); Life by G. Kawerau (1881),
who also wrote the notice in Hauck-Herzog, Realencyk.
fur prot. Theol., where other literature is cited.
AGRICOLA, MARTIN (c. 1500-1556), German musician, was
born about 1500 in Lower Silesia. His German name was Sohr or
Sore. From 1524 till his death he lived at Magdeburg, where
he occupied the post of teacher or cantor in the Protestant
school. The senator and music-printer Rhau, of Wittenberg, was
a close friend of Agricola, whose theoretical works, providing
valuable material concerning the change from the old to the new
system of notation, he published. Agricola was also the first
to harmonize in four parts Luther's chorale, Ein' feste Burg.
Four other Agricolas1 are known as composers between
the end of the 15th century and the middle of the 17th.
In the 18th century we find Burney, in the course of his tour in
Germany (1772), much impressed by JOHANN FRIEDRICH AGRICOLA
(1720-1774), court composer and director of the royal chapel to
Frederick the Great. This Agricola was a pupil of Bach, and a
fine organist and clever writer on music, especially on operatic
style, the problems of which were beginning to be raised by
French writers-and composers in preparation for the work of Gluck.
AGRICOLA, RODOLPHUS (properly ROELOF HUYSMANN) (1443-1485),
Dutch scholar, was born at Baflo, near Groningen, in 1443.
He was educated at Louvain, where he graduated as master of
arts. After residing for some time in Paris, he went in
1476 to Ferrara in Italy, and attended the lectures of the
celebrated Theodorus Gaza (1400-1478) on the Greek language.
Having visited Pavia and Rome, he returned to his native
country about 1479, and was soon afterwards appointed syndic of
Groningen. In 1482, on the invitation of Johann von Dalberg,
bishop of Worms (1445-1503), whose friendship he had gained
in Italy, he accepted a professorship at Heidelberg, and
for three years delivered lectures there and at Worms on the
literature of Greece and Rome. By his personal influence
much more than by his writings he did much for the promotion
of learning in Germany; and Erasmus and other critics of the
generation immediately succeeding his own are full of his
praises. In his opposition to the scholastic philosophy he
in some degree anticipated the great intellectual revolution
in which many of his pupils were conspicuous actors. He died
at Heidelberg on the 28th of October 1485. His principal
work is De inventione dialectica, libri iii., in which
he attempts to change the scholastic philosophy of the day.
See T. F. Tresling, Vita et Merita Rudolphi Agricolae (Groningen,
1830); v. Bezold, R. Agricola (Munchen, 1884): and Ihm, Der
Humanist R. Agricola, sein Leben und seine Schriften (Paderb., 1893).
AGRICULTURAL GANGS, groups of women, girls and boys organized
by an independent gang-master, under whose supervision they
execute agricultural piece-work for farmers in certain parts of
England. They are sometimes called ``public gangs'' to
distinguish them from ``private gangs'' consisting of workers
engaged by the farmer himself, and undertaking work solely for
him, under his own supervision or under that of one of his
men. The system was for long prevalent in the counties of
Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire,
Norfolk and Suffolk, and is still to be found in a much
modified form in the fen district. The practice dates
from the latter years of the reign of George III., when the
low-lying, marshy lands surrounding the basin of the Wash
were being rapidly drained and converted into rich alluvial
districts. The unreformed condition of the poor-law, under
which the support of the poor fell upon each individual parish,
instead of a union of parishes, made landlords reluctant to
erect cottages on the reclaimed land for the benefit of their
tenants. Labour had to be obtained for the cultivation of
these new lands, and that of women, girls and boys, being
cheaper than the labour of men, was consequently very largely
employed. The tendency to moral and physical ruin which resulted
from this nomadic life was so great that an inquiry into the
condition of agricultural child-labour was included in the
reference to the commission on child-labour appointed in 1862,
and the results were so startling that the Agricultural Gangs
Act was passed in 1867, forbidding the employment of any child
under eight years old, and of any female under a male gangmaster
unless a female licensed to act as gang-mistress were also
1 Alexander, died 1506; Johann, flor. 1600; Wolfgang Christoph,
flor. 1630; and George Ludwig, 1643-1676. present. Gang-masters
must be licensed by two justices, and may not hold a liquor
license. The distance to be traversed on foot is fixed by
the justices, and the licenses must be renewed every six
months. Later legislation made more stringent the regulations
under which children are employed in agricultural gangs. By
the Elementary Education Act 1876, repealing and re-enacting
the principal provisions of the Agricultural (Children) Act
1873, no child shall be employed under the age of eleven years,
and none between eleven years and thirteen years before the
child has obtained a certificate of having reached the standard
of education fixed by a by-law in force in the district.
AGRICULTURE (from Lat. ager, field, and colere, to
cultivate), the science, art and industry of utilizing the soil
so as to produce the means of human subsistence, embracing in its
widest sense the rearing of live-stock as well as the raising of
crops. The history of agriculture is the history of man in
his most primitive, and most permanent aspect. Hence the
nations of antiquity ascribed to it a divine origin; Brahma
in Hindustan, Isis in Egypt, Demeter in Greece, and Ceres in
Italy, were its founders. The simplest form of agriculture is
that in which crops are raised from one patch of ground till it
is exhausted, when it is allowed to go wild and abandoned for
another. This ``extensive'' husbandry is found in combination
with a nomadic or semi-nomadic and pastoral organization, such
as that of the German tribes described by Caesar and Tacitus
(see especially Germania, 26). The discovery of the uses
of the bare fallow and of manure, by making it possible to
raise crops from the same area for an indefinite period, marks
a stage of progress. This ``intensive'' culture in a more
or less developed form was practised by the great nations of
antiquity, and little decided advance was made till after the
middle ages. The introduction of new plants, which made it
possible to dispense with the bare fallow, and still later the
application to husbandry of scientific discoveries as to soils,
plant constituents and manures, brought about a revolution in
farming. But the progress of husbandry, evidenced by the
production of larger and better crops with more certainty, is
due to that rationalizing of agricultural practices which is
the work of modern times. What before was done in the light
of experience is nowadays done in the light of knowledge.
Even the earliest forms of intensive cultivation demand the
practice of the fundamental processes of husbandry--ploughing,
manuring, sowing, weeding, reaping. It is the improvements
in methods, implements and materials, brought about by the
application of science, that distinguish the husbandry of
the 20th century from that of medieval and ancient times.
Ancient Husbandry.--The monumental records of Egypt are
the source of the earliest information on farming. The Egypt
Egypt.
of the Pharaohs was a country of great estates farmed either
by tenants or by slaves or labourers under the superintendence
of stewards. It owed its fertility to the Nile, which,
inundating the land near its banks, was distributed by means
of canals over more distant portions of its valley. The
autumnal subsidence of the river was followed by shallow
ploughing performed by oxen yoked to clumsy wooden ploughs,
the clods being afterwards levelled with wooden hoes by
hand. Next came the sowing, the seed being pressed into
the soil by the feet of sheep which were driven over the
fields. At harvest the corn was cut high on the stalk with
short sickles and put up in sheaves, after which it was carried
to the threshing-floor and there trodden out by the hoofs of
oxen. Winnowing was done by women, who tossed the grain into the
air with small wooden boards, the chaff being blown away by the
winds. Wheat and barley were the chief crops, and another
plant, perhaps identical with the durra, i.e. millet, of
modern Egypt, was also cultivated. The latter, when ripe, was
pulled up by the roots, and the grain was separated by means
of an implement resembling a comb. To these crops may be added
peas, beans and many herbs and esculent roots. Oxen were much
prized, and breeding was carried on with a careful eye to
selection. Immense numbers of ducks and geese were reared.
Diodorus Siculus, writing of later times, says that cattle
were sent during a portion of each year to the marshy pastures
of the delta, where they roamed under the care of herdsmen.
They were fed with hay during the annual inundation, and at
other times tethered in meadows of green clover. The flocks
were shorn twice annually (a practice common to several Asiatic
countries), and the ewes yeaned twice a year. (See also EGYPT.)
The agriculture of the region bordering the Tigris and Euphrates,
like that of Egypt, depended largely on irrigation, and traces
of ancient canals are still to be seen in Babylonia. But
beyond the fact that both Babylonia and Assyria were large
producers of cereals, little is known of their husbandry.
The nomads of the patriarchal ages, whilst mainly dependent
upon their flocks and herds, practised also agriculture proper.
Biblical accounts among the Israelites.
The tracts over which they roamed were in ordinary circumstances
