seeded, but, as it becomes gradually more and more compressed
afterwards, recourse must be had to tillage while the plants
are growing; and this is hoeing, which also destroys the
weeds that would deprive the plants of their nourishment.
The leading features of Tull's husbandry are his practice
of laying the land into narrow ridges of 5 or 6 ft.,
and upon the middle of these drilling one, two, or three
rows, distant from one another about 7 in. when there were
three, and 10 in. when only two. The distance of the plants
on one ridge from those on the contiguous one he called
an interval; the distance between the rows on the same
ridge, a space or partition; the former was stirred
repeatedly by the horse-hoe, the latter by the hand-hoe.
``Hoeing,'' he says, ``may be divided into deep, which is our
horse-hoeing; and shallow, which is the English hand-hoeing;
and also the shallow horse-hoeing used in some places betwixt
rows, where the intervals are very narrow, as 16 or 18
inches. This is but an imitation of the hand-hoe, or a
succenadeum to it, and can neither supply the use of dung nor
fallow, and may be properly called scratch-hoeing.'' But in
his mode of forming ridges his practice seems to have been
original; his implements, especially his drill, display much
ingenuity; and his claim to the title of founder of the present
horse-hoeing husbandry of Great Britain seems indisputable.
Contemporary with Tull was Charles, 2nd Viscount Townshend,
a typical representative of the large landowners to whom
the strides made by agriculture in the 18th century were
due. The class to which he belonged was the only one which
could afford to initiate improvements. The bulk of the land
was still farmed by small tenants on the old common-field
system, which made it impossible for the individual to adopt
a new crop rotation and hindered innovation of every kind.
On the other hand, the small farmers who occupied separated
holdings were deterred from improving by the fear of a rise in
rent. Townshend's belief in the growing of turnips gained
him the nickname of ``Turnip Townshend.'' In their cultivation
he adopted Tull's practice of drilling and horse-hoeing,
and he was also the founder of the Norfolk or four-course
system, the first of those rotations which dispense with
the necessity of a summer-fallow and provide winter-keep for
live-stock (see below, Rotation of Crops). The spread of
these principles in Norfolk made it, according to Arthur Young
(writing in 1770), one of the best cultivated counties in
England. In the latter half of the century another Norfolk
farmer, Thomas William Coke of Holkham, earl of Leicester,
(1752-1842), figures as a pioneer of high-farming. He was one
of the first to use oil-cake and bone-manure, to distinguish
the feeding values of grasses, to appreciate to the full the
beneficial effects of stock on light lands and to realize
the value of long leases as an incentive to good farming.
Agriculture in Scotland in the 18th century.
Of the progress of the art in Scotland, till towards the
end of the 17th century, we are almost entirely ignorant.
The first work, written by James Donaldson, was printed in
1697, under the title of Husbandry Anatomized; or, Inquiry
into the Present Manner of Tilling and Manuring the Ground in
Scotland. It appears from this treatise that the state of
the art was not more advanced at that time in North Britain
than it had been in England in the time of Fitzherbert. Farms
were divided into infield and outfield; corn crops followed
one another without the intervention of fallow, cultivated
herbage or turnips, though something is said about fallowing
the outfield; enclosures were very rare; the tenantry had not
begun to emerge from a state of great poverty and depression;
and the wages of labour, compared with the price of corn,
were much lower than at present, though that price, at least
in ordinary years, must appear extremely moderate in our
times. Leases for a term of years, however, were not
uncommon; but the want of capital rendered it impossible
for the tenantry to attempt any spirited improvements.
The next work on the husbandry of Scotland is The Countryman's
Rudiments, or Advice to the Farmers in East Lothian, how to
labour and improve their Grounds, said to have been written
by John Hamilton, 2nd Lord Belhaven about the time of the
Union, and reprinted in 1723. The author bespeaks the favour of
those to whom he addresses himself in the following significant
terms:---``Neither shall I affright you with hedging, ditching,
marling, chalking, paring and burning, draining, watering and
such like, which are all very good improvements indeed, and
very agreeable with the soil and situation of East Lothian,
but I know ye cannot bear as yet a crowd of improvements, this
being only intended to initiate you in the true method and
principles of husbandry.'' The farm-rooms in East Lothian, as
in other districts, were divided into infield and outfield.
``The infield (where wheat is sown) is generally divided by
the tenant into four divisions or breaks, as they call them,
viz. one of wheat, one of barley, one of pease and one of
oats, so that the wheat is sowd after the pease, the barley
after the wheat and the oats after the barley. The outfield
land is ordinarily made use of promiscuously for feeding of
their cows, horse, sheep and oxen; 'tis also dunged by their
sheep who lay in earthen folds; and sometimes, when they
have much of it, they fauch or fallow a part of it yearly.''
Under this management the produce seems to have been three
times the seed; and yet, says the writer, ``if in East Lothian
they did not leave a higher stubble than in other places of the
kingdom, their grounds would be in a much worse condition than
at present they are, though bad enough.'' ``A good crop of corn
makes a good stubble, and a good stubble is the equalest mucking
that is.'' Among the advantages of enclosures, he observes,
``you will gain much more labour from your servants, a great
part of whose time was taken up in gathering thistles and other
garbage for their horses to feed upon in their stables; and
thereby the great trampling and pulling up and other destruction
of the corns while they are yet tender will be prevented.''
Potatoes and turnips are recommended to be sown in the yard
(kitchen-garden). Clover does not seem to have been in
use. Rents were paid in corn; and for the largest farm, which
he thinks should employ no more than two ploughs, the rent was
about six chalders of victual ``when the ground is very good,
and four in that which is not so good. But I am most fully
convinced they should take long leases or tacks, that they
may not be straitened with time in the improvement of their
rooms; and this is profitable both for master and tenant.''
Such was the state of the husbandry of Scotland in the early
part of the 18th century. The first attempts at improvement
cannot be traced farther back than 1723, when a number of
landholders formed themselves into a society, under the title
of the Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture
in Scotland. John, 2nd earl of Stair, one of their most
active members, is said to have been the first who cultivated
turnips in that country. The Select Transactions of this
society were collected and published in 1743 by Robert Maxwell,
who took a large part in its proceedings. It is evident from
this book that the society had exerted itself with success
in introducing cultivated herbage and turnips, as well as
in improving the former methods of culture. But there is
reason to believe that the influence of the example of its
numerous members did not extend to the common tenantry, who
not unnaturally were reluctant to adopt the practices of those
by whom farming was perhaps regarded as primarily a source
of pleasure rather than of profit. Though this society,
the earliest probably in the United Kingdom, soon counted
upwards of 300 members, it existed little more than 20 years.
In the introductory paper in Maxwell's collection we are told that--
``The practice of draining, enclosing, summer fallowing, sowing
flax, hemp, rape, turnip and grass seeds, planting cabbages
after, and potatoes with, the plough, in fields of great extent,
is introduced; and that, according to the general opinion,
more corn grows now yearly where it was never known to grow
before, these twenty years last past, than perhaps a sixth of
all that the kingdom was in use to produce at any time before.''
In 1757 Maxwell issued another work entitled The Practical
Husbandman; being a collection of miscellaneous papers
on Husbandry, &c. In it the greater part of the Select
Transactions is republished, with a number of new papers,
among which an Essay on the Husbandry of Scotland,
with a proposal for the improvement of it, is the most
valuable. In this he lays it down as a rule that it is
bad husbandry to take two crops of grain successively,
which marks a considerable progress in the knowledge of
modern husbandry; though he adds that in Scotland the best
husbandmen after a fallow take a crop of wheat; after the
wheat, peas; then barley, and then oats; and after that they
fallow again. The want of enclosures was still a matter of
complaint. The ground continued to be cropped so long
as it produced two seeds; the best farmers were contented
with four seeds, which was more than the general produce.
1760 to 1815.
The gradual advance in the price of farm produce soon after
the year 1760, occasioned by the increase of population and of
wealth derived from manufactures and commerce, gave a powerful
stimulus to rural industry, augmented agricultural capital and
called forth a more skilful and enterprising race of farmers.
A more rational system of cropping now began to take the
place of the thriftless and barbarous practice of sowing
successive crops of corn until the land was utterly exhausted,
and then leaving it foul with weeds to recover its pover
by an indefinite period of rest. Green crops, such as
turnips, clover and rye. grass, began to be alternated
with grain crops, whence the name alternate husbandry.
The writings of Arthur Young (q.v.), secretary to the Board of
Agriculture, describe the transition from the old to the new
agriculture. In many places turnips and clover were still
unknown or ignored. Large districts still clung to the old
common-field system, to the old habits of ploughing with teams
of four or eight, and to slovenly methods of cultivation.
Young's condemnation of these survivals was as pronounced as
his support of the methods of the large farmers to whom he
ascribed the excellence of the husbandry of Kent, Norfolk and
Essex. He realized that with the enclosure of the waste
lands and the absorption of small into large holdings, the
common-field farmer must migrate to the town or become a
hired labourer; but he also realized that to feed a rapidly
growing industrial population, the land must be improved by
draining, marling, manuring and the use of better implements,
in short by the investment of the capital which the yeoman
farmer, content to feed himself and his own family, did not
possess. The enlargement of farms, and in Scotland the
letting of them under leases for a considerable term of
years, continued to be a marked feature in the agricultural
progress of the country until the end of the century, and
is to be regarded both as a cause and a consequence of that
progress. The passing of some 3500 enclosure bills,
affecting between 5 and 5 1/2 million acres, during the
