AGRARIAN LAWS (Lat. ager, land). Under this heading we deal

with the disposal of the public land (ager publicus) of ancient

Rome. It was a principle of the Republican constitution

that no gratuitous disposition of state property should be

made without the consent of the people. Hence many of the

ordinances affecting the public land were laws (leges)

in the strictest sense of that word. It is, however, both

justifiable and convenient to consider in this article all

the regulations that were made for the administration of

the public land by the executive authorities, as well as by

the people during the Republic, and by the commands of the

emperor, which had the force of law during the Principate.

The existence of public land, first in Italy, and then

in the Mediterranean world, was the outcome of two ideas

which are very familiar to students of antiquity. This

land was the prize of conquest and was one of the means of

defraying the current expenses of state-administration.

For the latter purpose land is often leased or allowed to

be occupied on the condition of the payment of dues. But it

may be made to fulfil another purpose as well--this purpose

being the satisfaction of the individual needs of poorer

citizens. To meet this object the land is usually assigned,

and on assignment generally ceases to be the property of the

state. But it often happens that the state is not wholly

disinterested in undertaking such acts of assignment. It

gains security and territorial control by planting garrisons

in conquered country, and it relieves itself of the necessity

of providing for its poorer classes whether by state-aid

or by a hazardous tampering with the rights of private

property. In this use to which public land could be turned

we see at once the connexion between agrarian legislation

and colonization--a connexion which was so close that

when a Roman spoke of an agrarian law he seems generally

to have understood by it a law establishing a colony--and

also the two aspects of colonization, the military and the

social. These two objects were indissolubly connected

throughout the whole of the earlier period of Roman agrarian

assignation. They only became separated in the period subsequent

to the Gracchi in so far as social motives still continued

to be operative when military precautions had ceased to be

necessary. It is probable that one of the chief motives

which prompted infant Rome to war with her neighbours was

the land-hunger of her citizens. This hunger she satisfied

after conquest by annexing a portion of the enemy's

territory. The amount thus confiscated varied from time to

time. It was usually a third, but sometimes a half or even

two-thirds, and after the fall of Capua in the Second Punic

War the whole territory of the state was annexed. It is

possible that by the close of the 2nd century B.C. one-half

of the land of Italy belonged to Rome whether in private

ownership or as the property of the state. Annexation was

carried on in the provinces on a relatively smaller scale:

but Rome retained as domain-land much of the territory of

communities which had been destroyed, such as Carthage and

Corinth, and the estates of former kings, such as the lands

of the Attalids in the Chersonese. Other domains in Sicily

and Greece, such as the territory of Leontini in the former,

or Oropus in the latter case, are also found. This peculiar

property of the Roman state in the provinces must be carefully

distinguished from the general overlordship which Rome was

supposed to hold over all provincial soil, expressed in the

statement that provincials had only possession or usufruct

of their land (Gaius ii. 7; Gromatici, p. 36, Lachmann).

This overlordship was probably merely a legal fiction by which

the juristic mind assigned a reason for the fact that the

provincials paid a land tax from which Italians were exempt.

Such portions of the territories of conquered cities as were

not claimed by Rome were as a matter of course left in the

undisturbed possession of these cities. If the city was

a federate state (civitas foederata), his possession was

guaranteed by a treaty; if it was a free city, the guarantee

was made by charter; if it was neither federate nor free, the

abandonment of the territory by Rome must have been taken as a

sufficient guarantee of the city's right to possess, although

statements relative to the surrender may have been contained

in the charter of the province (lex provinciae) to which

the city belonged. But, whether the states were federate,

free or stipendiary, there was only one case in which it was

important to specify precisely that land had been restored

(redditus) to its former occupants. This was the case where

Rome had marked out a territory for assignment to her own

citizens, but where in or near the limits of the assignment

some of the land had been left in the hands or its former

proprietors. Such land was noted in the state registers as

redditus veteri possessori. Sometimes it was found that such

an ancient possessor owned pieces of land separated from one

another. In such cases an exchange might be effected between

him and some other possessor, so that his possessions might be

continuous. The fact of such an exchange was symbolized in the

registers by the entry of land redditus et commutatus pro suo.

When the claims of earlier owners had been satisfied, the

state proceeded to deal with such land as it retained. It

dealt with it in two ways. It either alienated it, whether

in exchange for a price or gratuitously; or it kept it as a

source of revenue, whether on a system of lease or on some

system of remunerative occupation. We may first consider

the cases in which the state decided to alienate. The land

might be sold for the benefit of the treasury. Typical

instances of this treatment are furnished by the sale of

some Campanian land during the Second Punic War (Livy xxviii.

46, xxxii. 7). The censors may have directed the sale, but

it was executed by the quaestors as the regular officials

of the treasury. Hence such land was described as ager

quaestorius. The land was sold in definitely marked out

plots, and we must suppose that, as a rule, when this sale

had been effected, the lots fell under the absolute ownership

of their purchasers. Yet there was some period of Roman

history when this ownership was (at least in certain cases)

conditioned. The Roman writers on agriculture speak of

conditions and their neglect (Gromatici, p. 115). The

conditions were probably those of military service or frontier

defence. The epoch of history at which this conditioned

ownership was recognized cannot be determined. It is a form

of tenure that would be equally appropriate to the needs of the

earliest period of Roman history and to those of imperial times.

The second mode of alienation was that by assignation. Lands

thus assigned were known as agri dati assignati. The gift

on the part of the state was gratuitous, and ownership passed

wholly to the assignee. The land so given was definitely

surveyed, marked out and registered. Such an assignment

might take one of two possible forms. It might be the

means of establishing a new ``plantation'' (colonia), with

some independent political organization of its own, however

slight--a settlement, therefore, which could be thought of as

an entity separate from the city of Rome and from any other

municipality. Or it might be the means of providing allotments

for individuals who remained domiciled at Rome or continued

to be members of some already existing municipality. It has

been frequently held in modern times that this latter method of

assignment is the one which our ancient authorities describe as

assignment to individuals (viritim), and that the antithesis

lies between the ``colonial'' and the ``viritane'' method of

distribution. It is true that the passages which speak of

the latter mode of assignation need not, and perhaps cannot,

be interpreted as presenting the antithesis (Varro, de Re

Rustica, i. 2. 7, i. 10. 2; Livy iv. 48, v. 24; Festus, p.

373; Gromatici, pp. 154, 160); yet it is not improbable

that the antithesis is latent in this specific use of the

term. It seems clear that the idea of assignation to, and,

therefore, of ownership by, individuals must originally have

been developed in contrast to the idea of ownership by some

larger group (see ROMAN LAW). When the stage of individual

ownership was reached, all assignation was ``viritane,'' but

only some assignation was ``colonial.'' ``Viritane'' was,

therefore, the wider term which would cover, and may sometimes

have been used specially to denote, the system of non-colonial

assignment. The amount granted to individuals in assignments

of both types varied from time to time. It was reckoned in

terms of the jugerum, which was approximately 5/8 of an English

acre. The earliest and smallest assignment was 2 jugera--an

amount so small that it seems to presuppose on the part of

the recipient some share in common or gentile property or

some additional private property of his own. Other quotas

were 3, 3 7/12, 7, 10 + 14 jugera. The last was the maximum

amount granted before the time of Ti. Gracchus (133 B.C.),

and it was held by representatives of the old school that

7 jugera were as much as any frugal Roman should want

(Pliny, Historia Naturalis, xviii. 18). The division was

carried out by commissions of 3, 5 or 10 men appointed by

the people (Cicero, de Lege Agraria ii. 7. 17). The land

which the state retained as ager publicus was always placed

in the hands of individuals, who occupied it in some manner

remunerative to the state. These individuals (possessores)

were never regarded as owners of the land thus occupied.

It remained the property of the state, was held without a

contract (precario) and could be resumed by the state at

will. But though the possessors had no claim against the

state, their ownership could be defended against all other

individual claimants; and it seems probable that from an

early date the praetor's possessory interdict was used

to protect all occupiers, provided their tenure had been

acquired neither by force (vi) nor by seizure of land in

its occupiers, absence (clam), nor by mere permission of

the previous holder to occupy (precario alter ab altero.)

Moreover, Appian says that possessors of this type could

transfer their land by inheritance, and that the land was

accepted as security by creditors. This kind of occupation,

therefore, though clearly distinguished from ownership

(dominium), was yet regarded as a perfectly secure form of

tenure. All occupiers of public land paid dues to the state

through a state contractor (publicanus.) These dues varied

in amount, and in the method of their collection. We learn

from Appian that the ordinary dues paid by occupiers of

arable land in Italy were 1/10 of seed crops and 1/5 of plant

produce. Owners who turned cattle or sheep on pasture

land belonging to the state also paid fixed dues to the

treasury. The occupiers of the Roman public land in Campania

paid a large rent (Cic. de leg. Agr. i. 7. 21). Appian's

account of the public land (Bell. Civ. i. 7) would lead

us to suppose that the amount of tax paid by the occupier,

and the method adopted by the state for the collection of the

revenues, depended upon the nature of the land at the time

when it first passed to a possessor. He says that some of

the public land which was in a good state of cultivation was

let on lease; but that with regard to the poor or devastated

land proclamation was made that anyone might squat on it and

till it in return for the small payment in kind mentioned

above. It has been questioned whether the land described by

Appian and by Cicero as let on lease, of which the Campanian

land and some lands in Sicily are typical, represents a legally

distinct class. It seems probable that the distinction is

one of practice rather than of law, and that the difference

lay not in the relation between the state and the possessor

(as would be the case if the leased land were really let to

individuals by the censor, while the occupied land was held

by mere permission of the state without any contract) but

in the details of the contract between the censor and the

publicanus with regard to the collection of the dues. The

conditions of the tenure of the Roman public land in Africa

are known to us from the Lex Agraria of 111 B.C. (Bruns,

Fontes, i. 3. 11, vv. 85 foll.). Here the publicanus

is the middleman between the state and the possessor, and

purchases from the censor the right of collecting dues. The

law places no restriction on bargaining between the censor and

the publicanus, but enacts that no possessor or pastor

shall ever be required by the publicanus to pay more than the

amount prescribed by the censors of 115 B.C. These conditions

may be regarded as typical for the occupation of public

lands. And when Cicero speaks of public land as let on lease

(locatus) by the censor, he no doubt refers to the farming

of the taxes to a publicanus for a fixed period, and not

to the letting of the land. This seems clear from a passage

(in Verr. iii. 6. 12) where he speaks of land in Sicily

which had been restored by Rome to former owners as being

leased. The land itself could not be leased by Rome if it

belonged not to Rome but to the Sicilian inhabitants; but the

collection of the revenues due to Rome could be so leased to

Publicani (q.v..) And the same explanation would apply to

Cicero's statements that the Campanian land was let on lease

by the censors (cf. Festus, s.v. venditiones.) The view

that there was a distinct class of the public land which was

let out for a fixed term of years to tenants on a definite

lease, unlike the ordinary public land which was always held

in occupation merely at will (precario), has been maintained

by W. A. Becker, and seems to be supported, with the help

of conjecture, by a few passages in Cicero and by Hyginus

(Gromatici, p. 116). But the passage of Hyginus is barely

intelligible even on this supposition; and Cicero's repeated

statement that the Campanian land was expressly exempted from

the legislation of the Gracchi (cf. Lex Agraria, Bruns, loc.

cit. v. 6) shows that there was not sufficient distinction

between the Campanian tenure and that of other public land in

Italy to make this definite exception by name superfluous.

The Sempronian law could obviously not touch land which the

state had leased to occupiers on the basis of a definite

contract. Moreover, we have absolutely no evidence for such a

contract, even in Cicero's speeches against Rullus, when he

might be expected to mention it as an objection to Rullus's

bill. That there were some distinctive characteristics

about the tenure of certain lands, of which the Campanian

land is typical, seems proved by the repeated association

of these lands with certain special lands in the provinces,

especially at Leontini in Sicily, and by some passages in the

Gromatici where agri vectigales are spoken of as a distinct

class. But what these characteristics were cannot be clearly

determined. It seems certain that in every case the

possessor occupied precario, and that only in the bargain

between the censor and the middleman was there room for

contract. Thus the state was justified in the claim to

resume public land which it made in many of the Agrarian laws.

The earliest agrarian measures of which we have any record are

the distributions of land conquered in war to poor citizens,

which later authorities attribute to Numa and Servius Tullius.

Such assignments, however, are not the result of legislative

acts, but of a voluntary surrender on the king's part of his

own portion of the spoils. It is probable that the agrarian

law which resulted from the proposals of Spurius Cassius

(consul 486 B.C.) was the first attempt made by the Roman

people to exercise its control over the occupation of state

territory. According to the traditional account, Cassius

proposed that such portion of lands lately conquered from

the Hernici as fell to the Roman state should be divided

in equal shares between the Roman plebs and the Latins;

and further that poor citizens should receive allotments of

land previously conquered, and occupied without any legal

right by the Patricians. The inclusion of the Latins in

the distribution was afterwards dropped; but the law in its

final form certainly asserted the right of the Plebeians

to take their share in the public land. The accounts given

of it by Livy and Dionysius are no doubt coloured by their

knowledge of later agrarian legislation, and it seems hardly

likely that the proposal to resume and redistribute public

land already occupied was made at this early stage; but it

probably challenged the exclusive claim of Patricians to

occupy. We hear of another agrarian law proposed by the

tribune Lucius Icilius in 456 B.C. (Lex Icilia de Aventino

publicando) which regulated in some way the tenure of public

land on the Aventine. In 376 B.C. the tribunes Licinius

and Sextius introduced into their laws, for the promotion

of the privileges of the plebs, a clause enacting that no

more than 500 jugera of land should be occupied by a single

cultivator. It seems almost certain from Livy's account

that this measure referred only to the occupation of ager

publicus, though some modern authorities have upheld the

view that it dealt with land held on any kind of tenure,

others again that it dealtonlywith private property in

land. According to Appian, the law also enacted that only 100

cattle and 500 sheep might be turned by one owner on the public

pastures. But it failed of its object because it did not

provide any adequate machinery for the resumption by the

state of land held in excess of the prescribed amount, and

was therefore easily evaded. The next agrarian law we hear

of was a more special measure dealing with lands conquered

from the Senones and Picentines. In 232 B.C. C. Flaminius,

then tribune of the plebs, proposed to resume these lands

for the state, although they were already occupied by large

landholders, and to distribute them in allotments to poor

citizens. The measure met with much opposition from the

richer classes, and did not gain the sanction of the senate;

but C. Flaminius ignored constitutional usage and brought it

direct before the council of the plebs, by which it was made

law. In 133 B.C. the tribune Tiberius Gracchus (q.v.)

re-enacted the earlier measure of Licinius and Sextius, with

the additional provisions that each owner might occupy 250

jugera for each son, in addition to the original 500, and that

a commission of three (iii. viri agris dandis adsignandis)

should be appointed to carry out the terms of the law. He

also enacted that the land occupied in excess of the prescribed

amount, and on that account resumed for the state by the land

commission, should be distributed in inalienable lots to poor

citizens. Subsequent modifications of those provisions

which dealt with the powers of the land commission led to

a re-enactment of the whole by C. Gracchus, the brother of

Tiberius, tribune in 123 B.C. But within 15 years from

the tribunate of C. Gracchus the whole of his law had been

rendered null by three further enactments. The first of these

permitted the sale of land allotted under the law, which thus

tended to return into the hands of its former occupiers as

private property, which the state had no longer any right to

resume. The second abolished the commission appointed to

carry out the terms of the law, thus putting a stop to further

resumption and distribution, and also transformed existing

occupiers into owners of the land they occupied, paying

only a small due to the treasury. The third (probably the

surviving Lex Agraria, Bruns, loc. cit.) abolished the

payment. This law belongs to the year 111 B.C. The dates

of the two former laws are uncertain, but it is probable that

the first was passed in 121, the second in 119 or 118. From

this time forward a change comes over land legislation. The

ordinary public land in Italy, in the hands of occupiers,

which had given rise to all the agrarian legislation between

376 and 111, had practically ceased to exist. The Campanian

land still remained, but the same reasons which led to its

exemption from the Gracchan legislation seem to have continued

to protect its holders until 63 B.C. In the meantime several

agrarian laws were passed which provided for the distribution

of land placed in some other way at the disposal of the

state. In 100 B.C. Appuleius Saturninus (q.v.), tribune

of the plebs, proposed the allotment of lands recently taken

from the Cimbri in Gaul. This law was passed, but eventually

declared null by the senate, with the rest of Saturninus's

laws. A more dangerous precedent was set by Sulla in his

dictatorship (82-81 B.C..) He was the first to confiscate

the lands of his political foes, and of communities which had

resisted him, and treating them as ager publicus, assign

them to his veterans as a prize. This example was followed

by Octavian (Augustus) and Antony (M. Antonius) after their

proscriptions in 43 B.C. A third method of providing land

for distribution was that adopted by Servilius Rullus (q.v.)

in 63 B.C. His bill enacted that land should be purchased

in Italy with money gained by the sale of Roman territories

abroad, and allotted to citizens. A commission of ten (x.

viri agris dandis adsignandis), annually elected by 9

out of the 35 tribes, was to carry out the terms of the

law. Rullus also ventured to propose the distribution of the

Campanian land, which had hitherto been respected by all agrarian

reformers. It was chiefly on this ground that Cicero in

his three speeches on the Agrarian law succeeded in exciting

such a general feeling against it that it was eventually

withdrawn. In 60 B.C. the tribune L. Flavius brought

forward a bill for the distribution of lands to Pompey's

veterans. The Campanian land was certainly to be included in

the distribution, and it is clear from Cicero that the bill in

some way dealt violently with the rights of private owners. It

also, however, enacted that land should be purchased by the

state with the wealth which Pompey's conquests had brought

into the treasury. The last proposal was supported by Cicero,

but the bill seems to have been dropped, only to reappear in

more moderate form in the following year. A consular bill,

the lex Julia Campana, was passed by Julius Caesar in 59

B.C., which provided for the settlement of Pompey's veterans

on the Campanian land, and other lands purchased by the state

from private owners in Italy with the full consent of the

latter. In its original form, the bill omitted all reference

to the Campanian land, which seems to have been included

by Caesar in the distribution only when the continued and

unreasoning opposition of the senate had goaded him to extreme

measures. A commission of twenty was to be appointed to

carry out the law, from which Caesar himself was expressly

excluded. This measure finally settled the question of

the Campanian land, which now passed out of the category of

ager publicus. The last agrarian law of the republic was

that passed in 44 B.C. on the proposal of the consul M.

Antonius, or of his brother L. Antonius. We have no detailed

account of the measure, but it seems to have provided grants

of land for veterans, and was to be administered by seven

commissioners. The law was afterwards cancelled by decree of

the senate, probably on the ground of some technical flaw.

The emperor Vespasian attempted to reclaim for the state small

oddments of land (subseciva) which were held by neighbouring

owners to whom they had never been definitely assigned. The

attempt met with violent opposition, and though resumed by

Titus, was finally crushed by Domitian, who issued an edict

recognizing all oddments of land thus held to be private property.

AUTHORITIES.--Niebuhr, History of Rome (English

translation), ii. p. 129 foll. (Cambridge, 1832); Becker,

Handbuch der romischen Alterthumer, iii. 2, p. 142

(Leipzig, 1843); Marquardt, Romische Staatsverwaltung,

i. p. 96 foll. (Leipzig, 1881); Madvig, Verfassung und

Verwaltung des romischen Staates, ii. p. 364 foll. (Leipzig,

1882), (See also ROME, History.) (A. H. J. G; A. M. CL.)

AGREDA, MARIA FERNANDEZ CORONEL, ABBESS OF, known in

religion as Sor (Sister) Maria de Jesus (1602-1665), was the

daughter of Don Francisco Coronel and of his wife Catalina de

Arana. She was born at Agreda, on the borders of Navarre

and Aragon, on the 2nd of April 1602. All her family were

powerfully influenced by the ecstatic piety of Spain in that

age. Her biographer, Samaniego, records that even as an

infant in arms she was filled with divine knowledge. Her

stupidity as a child is piously accounted for by extreme

humility. From childhood she was favoured by ecstasies and

visions. When she was fifteen the whole family entered

religion. The father, now an old man, and the two sons

entered the Franciscan house of San Antonio de Nalda. Maria,

her mother and sister established a Franciscan nunnery in the

family house at Agreda, which, when Maria's reputation had

extended, was replaced by the existing building. She began

it with one hundred reals (one pound sterling) lent her by a

devotee, and it was completed in fourteen years by voluntary

gifts. Much against her own wish, we are told, she was

appointed abbess at the age of twenty-five. In 1668, four

years after her death, the Franciscans published a story that

at the age of twenty-two she had been miraculously conveyed to

Mexico, to convert a native people, and had made five hundred

journeys through the air for that purpose in one year.

Though the rule required the abbess to be changed every three

years, Maria remained the effective ruler of Agreda till her

death. The Virgin was declared abbess, and Maria acted as

her locus tenens. In her later years she inclined to the

``internal prayer,'' and neglect of the outward offices

of the church, which was usual with the ``alumbrados'' or

Quietists. The Inquisition took notice of her, but she was

not proceeded against with severity. Maria's importance in

religion and Spanish history is based on two grounds. In the

earlier part of her life, while the Franciscan, Francisco Andres

de la Torre, was her confessor, she wrote an Introduction to

the History of the Most Blessed Virgin. It was destroyed by

the direction of another confessor. Later on, by the order

of her superiors, and under the guidance of her Franciscan

confessor, Andres de Fuen Mayor, she wrote The Mystic City

of God. It is an extraordinary book, full of apocryphal

history, visions and scholasticism, which professes to have

been written by divine inspiration, and is devoted to praise

of the Virgin. In 1642 she sent to Philip IV. an account of

a vision she had had, of a council of the infernal powers for

the destruction of Catholicism and Spain. The king visited

her when on his way to Aragon to suppress the rebellion of

Catalonia. A long correspondence, which lasted till her death

on the 29th of March 1665, was begun. The king folded a sheet

of paper down the middle and wrote on the one side of the

division. The answers were to be written on the other and

the sheet returned. By a pious fraud copies were kept at

Agreda. How far Maria was only the mouthpiece of the Franciscans

must of course be a matter of doubt. Her correspondence was

apparently suspended whenever her confessor was absent. She

must, however, have co-operated at least, and it is certain

that the Franciscans, who were very unfortunate in some of

their pious women, owed not a little to her. The letters are

in excellent Spanish, are curious reading, and are invaluable

as illustrations for the second part of the reign of Philip IV.

The correspondence of Sor Maria with the king has been

published in full by Don F. Siluela, Cartas de la Venerable

Madre Sor Maria de Agreda y del Senor Rey Don Filipe IV.

(Madrid, 1885). The Mystic City of God is one of the most

characteristic monuments of Mariolatry, and has continued to be

much in favour with supporters of the dogma of the Immaculate

Conception. It appeared in Madrid in 1668, with a biographical

introduction by Samaniego, has been often reprinted, and was

translated into French and Italian. It was for a time reserved

by the Index, both Spanish and Papal, but was taken off by the

influence of the Franciscans and of Spain, the chief supporters

of the immaculate Conception. An account of Maria de Agreda

will be found in the Tracts of Michael Geddes (London,

1706),vol. iii., written by a competent critic and Anglican

divine of the 18th century who detested ``enthusiasm.'' (D. H.)

AGRICOLA, CHRISTOPH LUDWIG (1667-1719), German landscape

painter, was born and died at Regensburg (Ratisbon). He

spent a great part of his life in travel, visiting England,

Holland and France, and residing for a considerable period at

Naples. His numerous landscapes, chiefly cabinet pictures,

are remarkable for fidelity to nature, and especially for

their skilful representation of varied phases of climate. In

composition his style shows the influence of Caspar Poussin,

while in light and colour he imitates Claude Lorraine.

His pictures are to be found in Dresden, Brunswick, Vienna,

Florence, Naples and many other towns of both Germany and Italy.

AGRICOLA (the Latinized form of the name BAUER), GEORG

(1490-1555), German scholar and man of science, known as ``the

father of mineralogy,'' was born at Glauchau in Saxony on the

24th of March 1490. Gifted with a precocious intellect, he

early threw himself into the pursuit of the ``new learning,''

with such effect that at the age of twenty he was appointed

Rector extraordinarius of Greek at the so-called Great

School of Zwickau, and made his appearance as a writer on

philology. After two years he gave up his appointment in

order to pursue his studies at Leipzig, where, as rector, he

received the powerful support of the professor of classics,

Peter Mosellanus (1493-1524), a celebrated humanist of the

time, with whom he had already been in correspondence. Here

he also devoted himself to the study of medicine, physics and

chemistry. After the death of Mosellanus he went for a short

time to Italy, where he took his doctor's degree. On his

return he settled as practising physician in the Joachimstal,

a centre of mining and smelting works, his object being partly

``to fill in the gaps in the art of healing,'' partly to test

what had been written about mineralogy by careful observation

of ores and the methods of their treatment. His thorough

grounding in philology and philosophy had accustomed him to

systematic thinking, and this enabled him to construct out of

his studies and observations of minerals a logical system which

he began to publish in 1528. Bermannus, sive de re metallica

dialogus, the first attempt to reduce to scientific order

the knowledge won by practical work, brought Agricola into

notice. In 1530 Prince Maurice of Saxony appointed him

historiographer with an annual allowance, and he migrated to

Chemnitz, the centre of the mining industry, in order to widen

the range of his observations. The citizens showed their

appreciation of his learning by appointing him town physician

and electing him burgomaster. His popularity was, however,

short-lived. Chemnitz was a violent centre of the Protestant

movement, while Agricola never wavered in his allegiance

to the old religion; and he was forced to resign his

office. He now lived apart from the contentious movements

of the time, devoting himself wholly to learning. His chief

interest was still in mineralogy; but he occupied himself

also with medical, mathematical, theological and historical

subjects, his chief historical work being the Dominatores

Saxonici a prima origine ad hanc aetatem, published at

Freiberg. In 1544 he published the De ortu et causis

subterraneorum, in which he laid the first foundations

of a physical geology, and criticized the theories of the

ancients. In 1545 followed the De natura eorum quae effluunt

e terra; in 1546 the De veteribus et novis metallis, a

comprehensive account of the discovery and occurrence of

minerals; in 1548 the De animantibus subterraneis; and

in the two following years a number of smaller works on the

metals. His most famous work, the De re metallica, libri

xii., was published in 1556, though apparently finished

several years before, since the dedication to the elector and

his brother is dated 1550. It is a complete and systematic

treatise on mining and metallurgy, illustrated with many fine

and interesting woodcuts and containing, in an appendix, the

German equivalents for the technical terms used in the Latin

text. It long remained a standard work, and marks its

author as one of the most accomplished chemists of his

time. Believing the black rock of the Schlossberg at Stolpen

to be the same as Pliny's basalt, he applied this name to

it, and thus originated a petrological term which has been

permanently incorporated in the vocabulary of science.

In spite of the early proof that Agricola had given of the

tolerance of his own religious attitude, he was not suffered

to end his days in peace. He remained to the end a staunch

Catholic, though all Chemnitz had gone over to the Lutheran

creed; and it is said that his life was ended by a fit of

apoplexy brought on by a heated discussion with a Protestant

divine. He died at Chemnitz on the 21st of November 1555,

and so violent was the theological feeling against him, that

he was not suffered to rest in the town to which he had added

lustre. Amidst hostile demonstrations he was carried

to Zeitz, seven miles from Chemnitz, and there buried.

See article by Gumbel in Allgem. Deutsche Biog.

(1875); F. L. Becher, Georg Agricola und Werner

(Freiberg, 1819); F. A. Schmidt, Georg Agricola's

Bermannus mit Einleitung (Freiberg, 1806); Poggendorff,

Biographisches Handworterbuch; Agricola's works passim.

AGRICOLA, GNAEUS JULIUS (A.D. 37-93), Roman statesman and

general, father-in-law of the historian Tacitus, was born on

the 13th of June A.D. 37 (according to others, 39) at Forum

Julii (Frejus) in Gallia Narbonensis. His father, Julius

Graecinus, having been put to death by Caligula, Agricola

was brought up by his mother Julia Procilla. After studying

philosophy at Massilia, he entered the army and served (59)

under Suetonius Paulinus in Britain. In 61 he returned to

Rome, where he married Domitia Decidiana, a Roman lady of

distinction. In 63 he was quaestor in Asia, in 65 tribune,

in 68 praetor, and when Vespasian was proclaimed emperor,

he immediately declared himself his supporter. In 70 he was

appointed to the command of the 20th legion in Britain, then

stationed at Deva (Chester). On his return to Rome at the

end of three years he was made censor, raised to the rank of

patrician, and appointed governor of Aquitania (74-78).

Appointed consul suffectus in the following year, he was

admitted into the college of pontiffs and made governor of

Britain. In the same year he betrothed his daughter to

Tacitus. Although the legation of Britain lasted as a rule

only three years, Agricola held the post for at least seven

and succeeded in reconciling the inhabitants to Roman rule

and inducing them to adopt the customs and civilization of

their conquerors. His military achievements were equally

brilliant. After conquering the Ordovices in North Wales and

the island of Mona (Anglesey), during the next two years he

carried his victorious arms to the Taus (Tay; others read

Tanaus, perhaps the north Tyne), and in his fourth campaign

fortified the country between Clota and Bodotria (the firths

of Clyde and Forth) as a protection against the attacks of the

Caledonians. Having explored the coasts of Fife and Forfar, he

gained a decisive victory over the Caledonians under Galgacus

at the Graupian hill (see BRITAIN, Roman.) His successes,

however, had aroused the envy and suspicion of Domitian.

He was recalled to Rome, where he lived a life of studied

retirement, to avoid the possibility of giving offence to the

tyrant. He died in 93, poisoned, it was rumoured, by the

emperor's orders. The Life of Agricola by his son-in-law

Tacitus is practically a panegyric or funeral oration.

See Urlichs, De Vita et Honoribus Agricolae (1868);

Dio Cassius xxxix. 50, lxvi. 20: Mommsen, Provinces of

the Roman Empire (Eng. trans., 1886), i. 183-184, 194.

AGRICOLA, JOHANN FRIEDRICH (1720-1774), German musician, was

born at Dobitschen in Saxe-Altenburg, on the 4th of January

1720. While a student of law at Leipzig he studied music

under Johann Sebastian Bach. In 1741 he went to Berlin,

where he studied musical composition. He was soon generally

recognized as one of the most skilful organists of his time;

and in 1751, as the result of a comic opera, Il Filosofo

convinto in amore, performed at Potsdam, he was made court

composer to Frederick the Great. He died in Berlin on the

1st of December 1774. In 1759, on the death of Karl Heinrich

Graun, he was appointed conductor of the royal orchestra.

Besides several operas of merit, he composed instrumental

pieces and church music. His reputation chiefly rests,

however, on his theoretical and critical writings on musical

subjects. He wrote under the pseudonym of Flavio Anicio Olibrio.

AGRICOLA (originally SCHNEIDER, then SCHNITTER), JOHANNES

(1494-1566), German Protestant reformer, was born on the 20th of

April 1494, at Eisleben, whence he is sometimes called Magister

Islebius. He studied at Wittenberg, where he soon gained the

friendship of Luther. In 1519 he accompanied Luther to the great

assembly of German divines at Leipzig, and acted as recording

secretary. After teaching for some time in Wittenberg, he

went to Frankfort in 1525 to establish the reformed mode of

worship. He had resided there only a month when he was called

to Eisleben, where he remained till 1526 as teacher in the

school of St Andrew, and preacher in the Nicolai church. In

1536 he was recalled to teach in Wittenberg, and was welcomed by

Luther. Almost immediately, however, a controversy, which

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

common to all shepherds alike. During the summer they frequented

the mountainous districts, and retired to the valleys to

winter. Vast flocks of sheep and of goat constituted their

wealth, although they also possessed oxen. When the last

were abundant, it seems to be an indication that tillage was

practised. Job, besides immense possessions in flocks

and herds, had 500 yoke of oxen, which he employed in

ploughing, and a ``very great husbandry.'' Isaac, too,

conjoined tillage with pastoral husbandry, and that with

success, for ``he sowed in the land Gerar, and reaped an

hundred-fold''--a return which, it would appear, in some

favoured regions, occasionally rewarded the labour of the

husbandman. In the parable of the sower, Jesus Christ

mentions an increase of thirty, sixty and an hundred fold.

Along with the Babylonians, Egyptians and Romans, the Israelites

are classed as one of the great agricultural nations of

antiquity. The Mosaic Institute contained an agrarian law,

based upon an equal division of the soil amongst the adult

males, a census of whom was taken just before their entrance

into Canaan. Provision was thus made for 600,000 yeomen,

assigning (according to different calculations) from sixteen

to twenty-five acres of land to each. This land, held in

direct tenure from Jehovah, their sovereign, was in theory

inalienable. The accumulation of debt upon it was prevented

by the prohibition of interest, the release of debts every

seventh year, and the reversion of the land to the proprietor,

or his heirs, at each return of the year of jubilee. The

owners of these small farms cultivated them with much care,

and rendered them highly productive. They were favoured

with a soil extremely fertile, and one which their skill and

diligence kept in good condition. The stones were carefully

cleared from the fields, which were also watered from canals

and conduits, communicating with the brooks and streams

with which the country ``was well watered everywhere,'' and

enriched by the application of manures. The seventh year's

fallow prevented the exhaustion of the soil, which was further

enriched by the burning of the weeds and spontaneous growth

of the Sabbatical year. The crops chiefly cultivated were

wheat, millet, barley, beans and lentils; to which it is

supposed, on grounds not improbable, may be added rice and

cotton. The chief implements were a wooden plough of

simple and light construction, a hoe or mattock, and a light

harrow. The ox and the ass were used for labour. The word

``oxen,'' which occurs in our version of the Scriptures, as

well as in the Septuagint and Vulgate, denotes the species,

rather than the sex. As the Hebrews did not mutilate any of

their animals, bulls were in common use. The quantity of land

ploughed by a yoke of oxen in one day was called a yoke or

acre. Towards the end of October, with which month the rainy

season begins, seedtime commenced, and of course does so

still. The seedtime, begun in October, extends, for wheat

and some other white crops, through November and December;

and barley continues to be sown until about the middle of

February. The seed appears to have been sometimes ploughed

in, and at other times to have been covered by harrowing.

The cold winds which prevail in January and February

frequently injured the crops in the more exposed and higher

districts. The rainy season extends from October to April,

during which time refreshing showers fall, chiefly during the

night, and generally at intervals of a few days. The harvest

was earlier or later as the rains towards the end of the season

were more or less copious. It, however, generally began in

April, and continued through May for the different crops in

succession. In the south, and in the plains, the harvest, as

might be expected, commenced some weeks earlier than in the

northern and mountainous districts. The slopes of the hills

were carefully terraced and irrigated wherever practicable,

and on these slopes the vine and olive were cultivated with

great success. At the same time the hill districts and

neighbouring deserts afforded pasturage for numerous flocks

and herds, and thus admitted of the benefits of a mixed

husbandry. Not by a figure of speech but literally,

every Israelite sat under the shadow of his own vine and

fig-tree; whilst the country as a whole is described (2

Kings xviii. 32) as ``a land of corn and wine, a land of

bread and vineyards, a land Of oil olive and of honey.''

The earliest known forms of intensive husbandry were based

chiefly upon the proximity of rivers and irrigation. The

Greece.

agriculture of classical ages was slightly more developed in

so far as the husbandman of Greece and Rome was less likely to

leave to nature the fertilization of the soil. Greece being

a mountainous land was favourable to the culture of the vine

rather than to that of cereals. Scanty information on its

agriculture is to be derived from the Works and Days of Hesiod

(about the 8th century B.C.), the Oeconomicus of Xenophon

(4th century B.C.), the History o/ Plants and the Origin

o/. Plants of Theophrastus (4th century B.C..)The latter is

the first writer on botany, and his works also contain interesting

remarks on manures, the mixing of soils and other agricultural

topics (see also GEOPONICI.) Greek husbandry had no salient

characteristics. The summer fallow with repeated ploughing

was its basis. The young crop was hoed, reaping was performed

with a sickle, and a high stubble left on the ground as

manure. The methods of threshing and winnowing were the same

as those in use in ancient Egypt. Wheat, barley and spelt

were the leading crops. Meadows were pastured rather than

mown. Attica was famous for its olives and figs, but general

agriculture excelled in Peloponnesus, where, by means of

irrigation and drainage, all the available land was utilized.

In the early days of the Roman republic land in Italy was held

largely by small proprietors, and agriculture was highly esteemed

Rome.

and classed with war as an occupation becoming a free

man. The story of Cincinnatus, twice summoned from the

plough to the highest offices in the state, illustrates

the status of the Roman husbandman. The later tendency

was towards the absorption of smaller holdings into large

estates. As wealth increased the peasant-farmer gave way

before the large landowner, who cultivated his property by

means of slave-labour, superintended by slave-bailiffs. The

low price of grain, which was imported in huge quantities

from Sicily and other Roman provinces, operated to crush

the small holder, at the same time as it made arable farming

unremunerative. Sheep-raising, involving larger holdings,

less supervision and less labour, was preferred by the

capitalist land-holder to the cultivation of the wheat,

spelt, vines or olives which were the chief crops of the

country. Lupine, beans, peas and vetches were grown for

fodder, and meadows, often artificially watered, supplied

hay. Swine and poultry were used for food to a greater

extent than oxen, which were bred chiefly for ploughing.

The following epitome of Virgil's advice to the husbandman

in the first book of the Georgics suggests the outline

of Roman husbandry: ``First learn the peculiarities of your

soil and climate. Plough the fallow in early spring, and

plough frequently--twice in winter, twice in summer unless

your land is poor, when a light ploughing in September will

do. Either let the land lie fallow every other year or else

let spelt follow pulse, vetches or lupine. Repetition of one

crop exhausts the ground; rotation will lighten the strain,

only the exhausted soil must be copiously dressed with manure

or ashes. It often does good to burn the stubble on the

ground. Harrow down the clods, level the ridges by cross

ploughing, work the land thoroughly. Irrigation benefits a

sandy soil, draining a marshy soil. It is well to feed down

a luxuriant crop when the plants are level with the ridge

tops. Geese and cranes, chicory, mildew, thistles, cleavers,

caltrops, darnel and shade are farmer's enemies. Scare off

the birds, harrow up the weeds, cut down all that shades the

crop. Ploughs, waggons, threshing-sledges, harrows, baskets,

hurdles, winnowing-fans are the farmer's implements.

The plough consists of several parts made of seasoned

wood. The threshing-floor must be smooth and rammed hard

to leave no crevices for weeds and small animals to get

through. Some steep seed in soda and oil lees to get a larger

produce. Careful annual selection by hand of the best

seed is the only way to prevent degeneration. It is best

to mow stubble and hay at night when they are moist.''

In addition to the use of several kinds of animal and other

manures, green crops were sometimes ploughed in by the

Romans. The shrewdness which, more than inventiveness,

characterized their husbandry comes out well in the following

quotation from the 18th book of the Natural History

of Pliny:--``Cato would have this point especially to be

considered, that the soil of a farm be good and fertile; also,

that near it there be plenty of labourers and that it be not

far from a large town; moreover, that it have sufficient means

for transporting its produce, either by water or land. Also

that the house be well built, and the land about it as well

managed. They are in error who hold the opinion that the

negligence and bad husbandry of the former owner is good for his

successor. Now, I say there is nothing more dangerous and

disadvantageous to the buyer than land so left waste and out

of heart; and therefore Cato counsels well to purchase land

of one who has managed it well, and not rashly to despise

and make light of the skill and knowledge of another.''

Roman writers on agriculture (see GEOPONICI) are more

numerous than those of Greece. The earliest important

treatises are the De re Rustica of Cato (234-149 B.C.)

and the Rerum Rusticarum Libri of Varro. More famous

than either are the Georgics of Virgil, published

about 30 B.C., and treating of tillage, horticulture,

cattle-breeding and bee-keeping. The works of Columella (1st

century A.D.) and of Palladius (4th century A.D.) are

exhaustive treatises, and the Natural History of the elder

Pliny (A.D. 23-70) contains considerable information on

husbandry. Under the later empire agriculture sank into a

condition of neglect, in which it remained throughout the Dark

Ages. In Spain its revival was due to the Saracens, and by

them, and their successors the Moors, agriculture was carried

to a high pitch of excellence. The work on agriculture1 of

Ibn-al-Awame, who lived in the 12th century A.D., treats

of the varieties of soils, manuring, irrigation, ploughing,

sowing, harvesting, stock, horticulture, arboriculture and plant

diseases, and is a lasting record of their skill and industry.

The subsequent history of agriculture is treated in the

following pages primarily from the British standpoint. Doubtless

Flanders may claim to be the pioneer of ``high farming'' in

medieval times, other countries following her lead in many

respects. It is not, however, necessary to deal with the

agricultural evolution of continental Europe, the gradual

progress of agriculture as a whole being well enough typified

in the story of its development in England, which indeed has

led the way in modern times. After sections on the history

and chief modern features of British agriculture, a separate

account is given of the general features of American agriculture.

HISTORY OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE

The ``combined'' or ``common-field'' system of husbandry

practised by the village community or township (see VILLAGE

COMMUNITIES) may be taken as the starting-point of English

agriculture, in which, till the end of the 18th century, it

is a dominant influence. The territory of the ``township''

consisted of arable land, meadow, pasture and waste. The

arable land was divided into two or, more usually, three

fields, which were cut up into strips bounded by balks and

allotted to the villagers in such a way that one holding might

include several disconnected strips in each field--a measure

designed to prevent the whole of the best land falling to one

man. The fields were fenced in from seed-time to harvest,

after which the fences were taken down and the cattle turned

in to feed on the stubble. According to early methods of

cropping, which were destined to prevail for centuries, wheat,

the chief article of food, was sown in one autumn, reaped

the next August; the following spring, oats or barley were

sown, and the year following the harvest was a period of

fallow. This procedure was followed on each of the three

fields so that in every year one of them was fallow. In

addition to the cereals, beans, peas and vetches were grown

to some extent. The meadow-land was also divided into

strips from which the various holders drew their supply of

hay. The pasture-land was common to all, though the number

of beasts which one man might turn into it was sometimes

limited. Rough grazing could also be had on the outlying waste

lands. In the absence of artificial grasses and roots, hay was

very valuable; it constituted almost the only winter food for

live stock, which were consequently in poor condition in spring.

Under the manorial system, the rise of which preceded the Norman

Conquest, communal methods of husbandry remained, but the

position of the cultivator was radically altered. ``Villeins,''

instead of free-holders, formed the most numerous class of the

population. They were bound to the soil and occupied holdings

of scattered strips (amounting usually to a virgate or 30

acres) in return for a payment partly in labour and partly in

kind. A portion of the manor, generally about a third,

constituted the lord's demesne, which, though sometimes

separate, usually consisted of strips intermingled with

those of his villeins. It thus formed part of the common

farm and was cultivated by the villeins and their oxen under

the superintendence of a bailiff. Below the villeins in the

social scale came the cottiers possessing smaller holdings,

sometimes only a garden, and no oxen. Free tenants and, after

the Norman Conquest, slaves formed small proportions of the

population. During the middle ages cattle and sheep were the

chief farm animals, but the intermixture of stock consequent

on the common-field system was a barrier to improvement in

the breed and conduced to the propagation of disease. Oxen,

usually yoked in teams of eight, were used for ploughing.

Sheep were small and their fleeces light, nevertheless, owing

to the meagreness of the yields of cereals2 and the demand for

wool for export, sheep-farming was looked to, as early as the

12th century, as the chief source of profit. Pigs and poultry

were universally kept. The treatise on husbandry of Walter of

Henley, dating from the early 13th century, is very valuable

as describing the management of the demesne under the two-

or three-field system. The following are typical passages:--

``April is a good season for fallowing, if the earth breaks

up behind the plough: for second fallowing after St John's

Day when the dust rises behind the plough; for seed-ploughing

when the earth is well settled and not too cracked; however,

the busy man cannot be always waiting on the seasons.''

``At sowing do not plough large furrows, but little and

well laid together, that the seed may fall evenly.''

``Know that an acre sown with wheat takes three ploughings,

except lands that are sown each year, and that each

ploughing costs 6d. more or less and the harrowing 1d.

It is well to sow at least two bushels to the acre.''

``Change your seed every year at Michaelmas, for the seed grown

on other land will bring you more than that grown on your own.''

``Neither sell your stubble nor move it from the ground unless you need

it for thatching. Have manure put up in heaps and mixed with earth.''

``Ridge marshy ground so as to let the water run off.''

During the 13th century there arose a tendency to commute

labour-rents for money payments. This change led to the

gradual disappearance of tenants in villeinage--the villeins

and cottiers--and the rise on the one hand of the small

independent farmer, on the other of the hired labourer. The

plague of 1348 marks an epoch in English agriculture. The

diminution of the population by one-half led to a scarcity of

labour and an increase of wages which deprived the landowner

of his narrow margin of profit. To meet this situation, the

Statute of Labourers (1351) enacted that no man should refuse

to work at the same rate of wages as prevailed before the

plague. In addition the landowners attempted to revive the

disappearing system of labour-rents. The bitter feelings

engendered between employer and employed culminated in

the peasants' revolt of 1381. Meanwhile large numbers of

landowners were forced to adopt one of two alternatives.

In some cases they ceased to farm their own land and let it

out on lease often together with the stock upon it; or else

they abandoned arable culture, laid down their demesnes to

pasture, enclosed the waste lands and devoted themselves to

sheep-farming. In the latter course they were encouraged

by the high prices of wool during the 14th century, and by

Edward III.'s policy of fostering both the export of wool

and the home manufacture of woollen goods. The 15th century,

barren of progress in methods of husbandry, was in its

early years moderately prosperous. Later on the increasing

abandonment of arable husbandry for sheep-farming brought

about a less demand for labour, and rural depopulation was

accelerated as the peasant was deprived of his grazing-ground

by the enclosure of more and more of the waste land.3

From the beginning of the reign of Henry VII. to the end

of Elizabeth's, a number of statutes were made for the

Agriculture under the Tudors and Stuarts.

encouragement of tillage, though probably to little purpose.

``Where in some towns,'' says the statute 4th Henry VII.

(1488), ``two hundred persons were occupied and lived of

their lawful labours. now there are occupied two or three

herdsmen, and the residue fall into idleness''; therefore it

is ordained that houses which within three years have been

let for farms, with twenty acres of land lying in tillage or

husbandry, shall be upheld, under the penalty of half the

profits, to be forfeited to the king or the lord of the

fee. Almost half a century afterwards the practice had become

still more alarming; and in 1534 a new act was tried, apparently

with as little success. ``Some have 24,000 sheep, some 20,000

sheep, some 10,000, some 6000, some 4000, and some more and

some less''; and yet it is alleged the price of wool had nearly

doubled, ``sheep being come to a few persons' hands.'' A

penalty was therefore imposed on all who kept above 2000 sheep;

and no person was to take in farm more than two tenements of

husbandry. By the 39th Elizabeth (1597) arable land made

pasture since the 1st Elizabeth shall be again converted into

tillage, and what is arable shall not be converted into pasture.

The literature of agriculture, in abeyance since the treatise

of Walter of Henley, makes another beginning in the 16th

century. The best of the early works is the Book of

Husbandry (1st ed. 1523), commonly ascribed to Sir Anthony

Fitzherbert, a judge of the Common Pleas in the reign of

Henry VIII., but more probably written by his elder brother

John. This was followed by the Book of Surveying and

Improvements (1523), by the same author. In the former

treatise we have a clear and minute description of the rural

practices of that period, and from the latter may be learned a

good deal of the economy of the feudal system in its decline.

The Book of Husbandry begins with a description of the

plough and other implements, after which about a third part

of it is occupied with the several operations as they succeed

one another throughout the year. Among other passages

in this part of the work, the following deserve notice:--

``Somme (ploughs) wyll tourn the sheld bredith at every

landsende, and plowe all one way''; the same kind of

plough that is now found so useful on hilly grounds. Of

wheel-ploughs he observes, that ``they be good on even

grounde that lyeth lyghte''; and on such lands they are

still most commonly employed. Cart-wheels were sometimes

bound with iron; of which he greatly approves. On the much

agitated question about the employment of horses or oxen in

labour, the most important arguments are distinctly stated.

``In some places,'' he says, ``a horse plough is better,'' and

in others an oxen plough, to which, upon the whole, he gives the

preference. Beans and peas seem to have been common crops. He

mentions the different kinds of wheat, barley and oats; and after

describing the method of harrowing ``all maner of cornnes,'' we

find the roller employed. ``They used to role their barley grounde

after a showr of rayne, to make the grounde even to mowe.''

Under the article ``To falowe,'' he observes, ``the greater

clottes (clods) the better wheate, for the clottes kepe the

wheat warme all wynter; and at March they will melte and

breake and fal in manye small peces, the whiche is a new

dongynge and refreshynge of the corne.'' This is agreeable to

the present practice, founded on the very same reasons. ``In

May, the shepe folde is to be set out''; but Fitzherbert does

not much approve of folding, and points out its disadvantages

in a very judicious manner. ``In the latter end of May and

the begynnynge of June, is tyme to wede the corne''; and then

we have an accurate description of the different weeds, and

the instruments and mode of weeding. Next comes a second

ploughing of the fallow; and afterwards, in the latter end of

June, the mowing of the meadows begins. Of this operation,

and of the forks and rakes and the haymaking there is a very

good account. The corn harvest naturally follows: rye and

wheat were usually shorn, and barley and oats cut with the

scythe. The writer does not approve of the common practice

of cutting wheat high and then mowing the stubbles. ``In

Somersetshire,'' he says, ``they do shere theyr wheat very

lowe; and the wheate strawe that they purpose to make thacke

of, they do not threshe it, but cut off the ears, and bynd

it in sheves, and call it rede, and therewith they thacke

theyr houses.'' He recommends the practice of setting up corn

in shocks, with two sheaves to cover eight, instead of ten

sheaves as at present--probably owing to the straw being then

shorter. The corn was commonly housed; but if there be

a want of room, he advises that the ricks be built on a

scaffold and not upon the ground. The fallow received a

third ploughing in September, and was sown about Michaelmas.

``Wheat is moost commonlye sowne under the forowe, that is to

say, cast it uppon the falowe, and then plowe it under'';

and this branch of his subject is concluded with directions

about threshing, winnowing and other kinds of barn-work.

Fitzherbert next proceeds to live stock. ``An housbande,'' he

says, ``can not well thryue by his corne without he have other

cattell, nor by his cattell without corne. And bycause that

shepe, in myne opynyon, is the mooste profytablest cattell

that any man can haue, therefore I pourpose to speake fyrst of

shepe.'' His remarks on this subject are so accurate that one

might imagine they came from a storemaster of the present day.

In some places at present ``they neuer seuer their lambes

from their dammes''; ``and the poore of the peeke (high)

countreye, and such other places, where, as they vse to

mylke theyr ewes, they vse to wayne theyr lambes at 12 weekes

olde, and to mylke their ewes fiue or syxe weekes''; but

that, he observes, ``is greate hurte to the ewes, and wyll

cause them that they wyll not take the ramme at the tvme of

the yere for pouertye, but goo barreyne.'' ``In June is tyme

to shere shepe; and ere they be shorne, they must be verye

well washen, the which shall be to the owner greate profyte

in the sale of his wool, and also to the clothe-maker.''

His remarks on horses, cattle, &c., are not less

interesting; and there is a very good account of the

diseases of each species, and some just observations

on the advantage of mixing different kinds on the same

pasture. Swine and bees conclude this branch of the work.

The author then points out the great advantages of enclosure;

recommends ``quycksettynge, dychynge and hedgeyng''; and

gives particular directions about settes, and the method

of training a hedge, as well as concerning the planting

and management of trees. Fitzherbert throws some light on

the position of women in the agriculture of his day. ``It

is a wyues occupation,'' he says, ``to wynowe all maner of

cornes, to make malte, to washe and wrynge, to make heye,

shere corne, and, in time of nede, to helpe her husbande

to fyll the mucke wayne or dounge carte, dryue the ploughe,

to loode heye, corne and suche other; and to go or ride

to the market to sel butter, chese, mylke, egges, chekyns,

capons, hennes, pygges, gese, and all maner of cornes.''

The Book of Surveying adds considerably to our knowledge of

the rural economy of that age. ``Four maner of commens'' are

described; several kinds of mills for corn and other purposes,

and also ``quernes that goo with hand''; different orders of

tenants, down to the ``boundmen,'' who ``in some places contynue

as yet''; ``and many tymes, by colour thereof, there be many

freemen taken as boundmen, and their lands and goods is taken

from them.'' Lime and marl are mentioned as common manures,

and the former was sometimes spread on the surface to destroy

heath. Both draining and irrigation are noticed, though

the latter but slightly. And the work concludes with an

inquiry ``how to make a township that is worth XX. marke a

yere, worth XX.li. a year,'' advocating the transition from

communal or open field to individual or enclosure farming.

``It is undoubted, that to every townshyppe that standeth

in tyllage in the playne countrey, there be errable landes

to plowe and sowe, and leyse to tye or tedder theyr horses

and mares upon, and common pasture to kepe and pasture their

catell, beestes and shepe upon; and also they have medowe

grounde to get their hey upon. Than to let it be known how

many acres of errable lande euery man hath in tyllage, and of

the same acres in euery felde to chaunge with his neyghbours,

and to leve them toguyther, and to make hym one seuerall

close in euery felde for his errable lands; and his leyse in

euery felde to leve them togyther in one felde, and to make

one seuerall close for them all. And also another seuerall

close for his portion of his common pasture, and also his

porcion of his medowe in a seuerall close by itselfe, and al

kept in seureall both in wynter and somer; and euery cottage

shall haue his portion assigned hym accordynge to his rent,

and than shall nat the ryche man ouerpresse the poore man

with his cattell; and euery man may eate his oun close at his

pleasure. And vndoubted, that hay and strawe that will find

one beest in the house wyll finde two beestes in the close,

and better they shall lyke. For those beestis in the house

have short heare and thynne, and towards March they will pylle

and be bare; and therefore they may nat abyde in the fylde

before the heerdmen in wintertyme for colde. And those that

lye in a close under a hedge haue longe heare and thyck, and

they will neuer pylle nor be bare: and by this reason the

husbande maye keoe twyse so many catell as he did before.

``This is the cause of this approwment. Nowe euery husbande

hath sixe seuerall closes, whereof iii. be for corne, the

fourthe for his leyse, the fyfte for his commen pastures,

and the sixte for his haye; and in wynter time there is but

one occupied with corne, and than hath the husbande other

fyue to occupiy tyll lente come, and that he hath his falowe

felde, his ley felde, and his pasture felde al sommer.

And when he hath mowen his medowe, then he hath his medowe

grounde, soo that if he hath any weyke catell that wold be

amended, or dyvers maner of catell, he may put them in any

close he wyll, the which is a great advantage; and if all

shulde lye commen, than wolde the edyche of the corne feldes

and the aftermath of all the medowes be eaten in X. or XII.

dayes. And the rych men that hath moche catell wold have the

advantage, and the poore man can have no help nor relefe in

wynter when he hath moste nede; and if an acre of lande be

worthe sixe pens, or it be enclosed, it will be worth VIII.

pens, when it is enclosed by reason of the compostying and

dongyng of the catell that shall go and lye upon it both day

and nighte; and if any of his thre closes that he hath for

his corne be worne or ware bare, than he may breke and plowe

up his close that he hadde for his layse, or the close that

he hadde for his commen pasture, or bothe, and sowe them with

corne, and let the other lye for a time, and so shall he have

always reist grounde, the which will bear moche corne with

lytel donge; and also he shall have a great profyte of the wod

in the hedges whan it is growen; and not only these profytes

and advantages beforesaid, but he shall save moche more than

al these, for by reason of these closes he shall save meate,

drinke and wages of a shepherde, the wages of the heerdmen, and

the wages of the swine herde, the which may fortune to be as

chargeable as all his holle rente; and also his corne shall be

better saved from eatinge or destroyeng with catel. For dout

ye nat but heerdemen with their catell, shepeherdes with their

shepe, and tieng of horses and mares, destroyeth moch corne,

the which the hedges wold save. Paraduenture some men would

say that this shuld be against the common weale, bicause the

shepeherdes, heerdmen and swyne-herdes shuld than be put out of

wages. To that it may be answered. though these occupations

be not used, there be as many newe occupations that were not

used before; as getting of quicke settes. diching, hedging

and plashing, the which the same men may use and occupye.''

The next author who writes professedly on agriculture is

Thomas Tusser, whose Five Hundred Points of Husbandry,

published in 1562, enjoyed such lasting repute that in 1723

Lord Molesworth recommended that it should be taught in

schools. In it the book of husbandry consists of 118 pages,

and then follows the Point of Housewifrie, occupying 42

pages more. It is written in verse. Amidst much that is

valueless there are some useful notices concerning the state

of agriculture at the time in different parts of England.

Hops, which had been introduced in the early part of the 16th

century, and on the culture of which a treatise was published

in 1574 by Reginald Scott, are mentioned as a well-known

crop. Buckwheat was sown after barley. Hemp and flax

are mentioned as common crops. Enclosures must have been

numerous in some counties; and there is a very good comparison

between ``champion (open fields) country and several,''

which Blith afterwards transcribed into his Improver

Improved. Carrots, cabbages, turnips and rape, not yet

cultivated in the fields, are mentioned among the herbs

and roots for the kitchen. There is nothing to be found in

Tusser about serfs or bondmen, as in Fitzherbert's works.

In 1577 appeared the Foure Bookes of Husbandry, translated, with

augmentation, from the work of Conrad Heresbach. Much stress

is laid on the value of manure, and mention is made of clover.

Fitzherbert, in deploring the gradual discontinuance of the

practice of marling land, had alluded to the grievance familiar

in modern times of tenants ``who, if they should marl and

make their holdings much better, fear lest they should be

put out, or make a great fine or else pay more rent.'' This

subject is treated at length in Sir John Norden's Surveyor's

Dialogue (1st ed. 1607), the next agricultural work demanding

notice. The author, writing from the landowner's point of

view, ascribes the rise in rents and the rise in the price

of corn4 to the ``emulation'' of tenants in competing for

holdings, a practice implying that the agriculture of the

period was prosperous. Norden's work contains many judicious

observations on the ``different natures of grounds, how

they may be employed, how they may be bettered, reformed and

amended.'' The famous meadows near Salisbury are mentioned,

where, when cattle have fed their fill, hogs, it is said,

``are made fat with the remnant--namely, with the knots and

sappe of the grasse.'' ``Clouer grasse, or the grasse honey

suckle'' (white clover), is directed to be sown with other

hay seeds. ``Carrot rootes'' were then raised in several

parts of England, and sometimes by farmers. London street

and stable dung was carried to a distance by water, and

appears from later writers to have been got for the trouble of

removing. Leases of 21 years are recommended for persons

of small capital as better than employing it in purchasing

land. The works of Gervase Markham, Leonard Mascall, Gabriel

Plattes and other authors of the first half of the 17th

century may be passed over, the best part of them being

preserved by Blith and Hartlib, who are referred to below.

Sir Richard Weston's Discourse on the Husbandry of Brabant

and Flanders was published by Hartlib in 1645, and its

title indicates the source to which England owed much of its

subsequent agricultural advancement. Weston was ambassador

from England to the elector palatine in 1619, and had the

merit of being the first who introduced the Great Clover,

as it was then called, into English agriculture, about

1652, and probably turnips also. Clover thrives best, he

says, when you sow it on the barrenest ground, such as the

worst heath ground in England. The ground is to be pared and

burnt, and unslacked lime must be added to the ashes. It

is next to be well ploughed and harrowed; and about 10 lb. of

clover seed must be sown on an acre in April or the end of

March. If you intend to preserve seed, then the second crop

must be let stand till it come to a full and dead ripeness, and

you shall have at the least five bushels per acre. Being once

sown, it will last five years; the land, when ploughed, will

yield, three or four years together, rich crops of wheat, and

after that a crop of oats, with which clover seed is to be sown

again. It is in itself an excellent manure, Sir Richard

adds; and so it should be, to enable land to bear this

treatment. Before 1655 the culture of clover, exactly

according to the present method, seems to have been well

known in England, and it had also made its way to Ireland.

A great many works on agriculture appeared during the time

of the Commonwealth, of which Walter Blith's Improver

Improved and Samuel Hartlib's Legacie are the most

valuable. The first edition of the former was published

in 1649, and of the latter in 1651; and both of them were

enlarged in subsequent editions. In the first edition of

the Improver Improved no mention is made of clover, nor in

the second of turnips, but in the third, clover is treated of

at some length, and turnips are recommended as an excellent

cattle crop, the culture of which should be extended from

the kitchen garden to the field. Sir Richard Weston must

have cultivated turnips before this; for Blith says that

Sir Richard affirmed to himself that he fed his swine with

them. They were first given boiled, but afterwards the swine

came to eat them raw, and would run after the carts, and

pull them forth as they gathered them--an expression which

conveys an idea of their being cultivated in the fields.

Blith's book is the first systematic work in which there

are some traces of alternate husbandry or the practice of

interposing clover and turnip between culmiferous crops.

He is a great enemy to commons and common fields, and to

retaining land in old pasture, unless it be of the best

quality. His description of the different kinds of ploughs is

interesting; and he justly recommends such as were drawn by two

horses (some even by one horse) in preference to the weighty

and clumsy machines which required four or more horses or

oxen. The following passage indicates the contemporary

theory of manuring:---``In thy tillage are these special

opportunities to improve it, either by liming, marling,

sanding, earthing, mudding, snayl-codding, mucking, chalking,

pidgeons-dung, hens-dung, hogs-dung or by any other means

as some by rags, some by coarse wool, by pitch marks, and

tarry stuff, any oyly stuff, salt and many things more, yea

indeed any thing almost that hath any liquidness, foulness,

saltness or good moysture in it, is very naturall inrichment

to almost any sort of land.'' Blith speaks of an instrument

which ploughed, sowed and harrowed at the same time; and the

setting of corn was then a subject of much discussion. Blith

was a zealous advocate of drainage and holds that drains to

be efficient must be laid 3 or 4 ft. deep. The drainage of

the Great Level of the Fens was prosecuted during the 17th

century, but lack of engineering skill and the opposition of

the fen-men hindered the reclamation of a now fertile region.

Hartlib's Legacie contains, among some very judicious directions,

a great deal of rash speculation. Several of the deficiencies

which the writer complains of in English agriculture must be

placed to the account of climate, and never have been or can be

supplied. Some of his recommendations are quite unsuitable to

the state of the country, and display more of general knowledge

and good intention than of either the theory or practice of

agriculture. Among the subjects deserving notice may be

mentioned the practice of steeping and liming seed corn as

a preventive of smut; changing every year the Species of

grain, and bringing seed corn from a distance; ploughing down

green crops as manure; and feeding horses with broken oats and

chaff. This writer seems to differ a good deal from Blith about

the advantage of interchanging tillage and pasture. ``It were

no losse to this island,'' he says, ``if that we should not

plough at all, if so be that we could certainly have corn at

a reasonable rate, and likewise vent for all our manufactures

of wool''; and one reason for this is, that pasture employs

more hands than tillage, instead of depopulating the country,

as was commonly imagined. The Grout, which he mentions

as ``coming over to us in Holland ships,'' about which he

desires information, was probably the same as shelled barley;

and mills for manufacturing it were introduced into Scotland

from Holland towards the beginning of the 18th century.

Among the other writers previous to the Revolution mention must

be made of John Ray the botanist and of John Evelyn, both men of

great talent and research, whose works are still in high estimation.

The first half of the 17th century was a period of agricultural

activity, partly due, no doubt, to the increase of enclosed

farms. Marling and liming are again practised, new

agricultural implements and manures introduced, and the

new crops more widely used. But the Civil War and the

subsequent politicaldisturbances intervened to prevent the

continuance of this progress, and the agriculture of the

end of the century seems to have relapsed into stagnation.

Scottish agriculture of the 17th century.

Of the state of agriculture in Scotland in the 16th and the

greater part of the 17th century very little is known; no

professed treatise on the subject appeared till after the

Revolution. The south-eastern counties were the earliest

improved, and yet in 1660 their condition seems to have been very

wretched. Ray, who made a tour along the eastern coast in

that year, says, ``We observed little or no fallow ground in

Scotland; some ley ground we saw, which they manured with sea

wreck. The men seemed to be very lazy, and may be frequently

observed to plough in their cloaks. It is the fashion of them

to wear cloaks when they go abroad, but especially on Sundays.

They have neither good bread, cheese nor drink. They cannot make

them, nor will they learn. Their butter is very indifferent,

and one would wonder how they could contrive to make it so

bad. They use much pottage made of coal-wort, which they call

kail, sometimes broth of decorticated barley. The ordinary

country-houses are pitiful cots, built of stone and covered with

turfs, having in them but one room, many of them no chimneys,

the windows very small holes and not glazed. The ground in

the valleys and plains bear very good corn, but especially

bears barley or bigge, and oats, but rarely wheat and rye.''

It is probable that no great change had taken place in Scotland

from the end of the 15th century, except that tenants gradually

became possessed of a little stock of their own, instead of

having their farm stocked by the landlord. ``The minority of

James V., the reign of Mary Stuart, the infancy of her son, and

the civil wars of her grandson Charles I., were all periods of

lasting waste. The very laws which were made during successive

reigns for protecting the tillers of the soil from spoil are

the best proofs of the deplorable state of the husbandman.''5

In the 17th century those laws were made which paved the

way for an improved system of agriculture in Scotland. By a

statute of 1633 landholders were enabled to have their tithes

valued, and to buy them either at nine or six years' purchase,

according to the nature of the property. The statute of 1685,

conferring on landlords a power to entail their estates, was

indeed of a very different tendency in regard to its effects on

agriculture. But the two Acts in 1695, for the division of commons

and separation of intermixed properties, facilitated improvements.

Progress of agriculture from 1688 to 1760.

From the Revolution to the accession of George III. the

progress of agriculture was by no means so considerable as

might be imagined from the great exportation of corn. It is

probable that very little improvement had taken place, either

in the cultivation of the soil or in the management of live

stock, from the Restoration down to the middle of the 18th

century. Clover and turnips were confined to a few districts,

and at the latter period were scarcely cultivated at all by

common farmers in the northern part of the island. Of the writers

of this period, therefore, it is necessary to notice only such

as describe some improvement in the modes of culture, or some

extension of the practices that were formerly little known.

In John Houghton's Collections on Husbandry and Trade, a

periodical work begun in 1681, there is one of the earliest

notices of turnips being eaten by sheep:----``Some in Essex have

their fallow after turnips, which feed their sheep in winter,

by which means the turnips are scooped, and so made capable

to hold dews and rain water, which, by corrupting, imbibes the

nitre of the air, and when the shell breaks it runs about and

fertilizes. By feeding the sheep, the land is dunged as if

it had been folded; and those turnips, though few or none be

carried off for human use, are a very excellent improvement,

nay, some reckon it so, though they only plough the turnips

in without feeding.'' This was written in February 1694. Ten

years before, John Worlidge, one of his correspondents, and

the author of the Systema Agriculturae (1669), observes,

``Sheep fatten very well on turnips, which prove an excellent

nourishment for them in hard winters when fodder is scarce; for

they will not only eat the greens, but feed on the roots in the

ground, and scoop them hollow even to the very skin. Ten acres

(he adds) sown with clover, turnips, &c., will feed as many

sheep as one hundred acres thereof would before have done.''

The next writer of note is John Mortimer, whose Whole Art of Husbandry,

a regular, systematic work of considerable merit, was published in 1707.

From the third edition of Hartlib's Legacie we learn that

clover was cut green and given to cattle; and it appears that

this practice of soiling, as it is now called, had become very

common about the beginning of the 18th century, wherever clover was

cultivated. Rye-grass was now sown along with it. Turnips were

hand-hoed and extensively employed in feeding sheep and cattle.

The first considerable improvement in the practice of

that period was introduced by Jethro Tull, a gentleman of

Berkshire, who about the year 1701 invented the drill, and

whose Horse-hoeing Husbandry, published in 1731, exhibits

the first decided step in advance upon the principles and

practices of his predecessors. Not contented with a careful

attention to details, Tull set himself, with admirable skill

and perseverance, to investigate the growth of plants, and

thus to arrive at a knowledge of the principles by which

the cultivation of field-crops should be regulated. Having

arrived at the conclusion that the food of plants consists

of minute particles of earth taken up by their rootlets, it

followed that the more thoroughly the soil in which they grew

was disintegrated, the more abundant would be the ``pasture''

(as he called it) to which their fibres would have access.

He was thus led to adopt that system of sowing his crops in

rows or drills, so wide apart as to admit of tillage of the

intervals, both by ploughing and hoeing, being continued until

they had well-nigh arrived at maturity. Such reliance did he

place in the pulverization of the soil that he grew as many

as thirteen crops of wheat on the same field without manure.

As the distance between his rows appeared much greater than

was necessary for the range of the roots of the plants, he

begins by showing that these roots extend much farther than

is commonly believed, and then proceeds to inquire into the

nature of their food. After examining several hypotheses,

he decides this to be fine particles of earth. The chief

and almost the only use of dung, he thinks, is to divide the

earth, to dissolve ``this terrestrial matter, which affords

nutriment to the mouths of vegetable roots''; and this can be

done more completely by tillage. It is therefore necessary not

only to pulverize the soil by repeated ploughings before it be

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

reign of George III., before which the whole number was

between 200 and 250, shows how rapidly the break-up of the

common-field husbandry and the cultivation of new land now

proceeded. The disastrous American War for a time interfered

with the national prosperity; but with the return of peace

in 1783 the cultivation of the country made more rapid

progress. The quarter of a century immediately following

1760 is memorable for the introduction of various important

improvements. It was during this period that the genius of

Robert Bakewell produced an extraordinary change in the character

of our more important breeds of live stock, more especially

by the perfecting of a new race of sheep--the well-known

Leicesters. Bakewell's fame as a breeder was for a time

enhanced by the improvement which he effected on the Long-horned

cattle, then the prevailing breed of the midland counties of

England. These, however, were ere long rivalled and afterwards

superseded by the Shorthorn or Durham breed, which the

brothers Charles and Robert Colling obtained from the useful

race of cattle that had long existed in the valley of the

Tees, by applying to them the principle of breeding which

Bakewell had already established. To this period also belong

George and Matthew Culley--the former a pupil of Bakewell--

who left their paternal property on the bank of the Tees and

settled on the Northumbrian side of the Tweed, bringing with

them the valuable breeds of live stock and improved husbandry

of their native district. The improvements introduced by

these energetic and skilful farmers spread rapidly, and

exerted a most beneficial influence upon the border counties.

From 1784 to 1795 improvements advanced with steady steps.

This period was distinguished for the adoption and working out

of ascertained improvements. Small's swing plough and Andrew

Meikle's threshing-machine, although invented some years before

this, were now perfected and brought into general use, to the

great furtherance of agriculture. Two important additions

were about this time made to the field crops, viz. the Swedish

turnip and potato oat. The latter was accidentally discovered

in 1788, and both soon came into general cultivation. In the

same year Merino sheep were introduced by George III., who

was a zealous farmer. For a time this breed attracted much

attention, and sanguine expectations were entertained that

it would prove of national importance. Its unfitness for the

production of mutton, and increasing supplies of fine clothing

wool from other countries, soon led to its total rejection.

In Scotland the opening up of the country by the construction

of practicable roads, and the enclosing and subdividing

of farms by hedge and ditch, was now in active progress.

The former admitted of the general use of wheel-carriages,

of the ready conveyance of produce to markets, and in

particular of the extended use of lime, the application

of which was immediately followed by a great increase of

produce. The latter, besides its more obvious advantages,

speedily freed large tracts of country from stagnant water

and their inhabitants from ague, and prepared the way

for the underground draining which soon after began to be

practised. Dawson of Frogden in Roxburghshire is believed to

have been the first who grew turnips as a field crop to any

extent. It is on record that as early as 1764 he had 100 acres

of drilled turnips on his farm in one year. An Act passed in

1770, which relaxed the rigour of strict entails and afforded

power to landlords to grant leases and otherwise improve their

estates, had a beneficial effect on Scottish agriculture.

The husbandry of the country was thus steadily improving, when

suddenly the whole of Europe became involved in the wars of

the French Revolution. In 1795, under the joint operation

of a deficient harvest and the diminution in foreign supplies

of grain owing to outbreak of war, the price of wheat,

which, for the twenty preceding years, had been under 50s. a

quarter, suddenly rose to 81s. 6d., and in the following year

reached 96s. In 1797 the fear of foreign invasion led to a

panic and run upon the banks, in which emergency the Bank

Restriction Act, suspending cash payment, was passed, and

ushered in a system of unlimited credit transactions. Under

the unnatural stimulus of these extra-ordinary events, every

branch of industry extended with unexampled rapidity. But

in nothing was this so apparent as in agriculture; the high

prices of produce holding out a great inducement to improve

lands then arable, to reclaim others that had previously lain

waste, and to bring much pasture-land under the plough. Nor

did this increased tillage interfere with the increase of

live stock, as the green crops of the alternate husbandry

more than compensated for the diminished pasturage. This

extraordinary state of matters lasted from 1795 to 1814, the

prices of produce even increasing towards the close of that

period. The average price of wheat for the whole period

was 89s. 7d. per quarter; but for the last five years it was

107s., and in 1812 it reached 126s. 6d. The agriculture

of Great Britain, as a whole, advanced with rapid strides

during this period; but nowhere was the change so great as in

Scotland. Indeed, its progress there, during these twenty

years, is probably without parallel in the history of any

other country. This is accounted for by a concurrence of

circumstances. Previous to this period the husbandry of

Scotland was still in a backward state as compared with the

best districts of England, where many practices, only of

recent introduction in the north, had been in general use for

generations. This disparity made the subsequent contrast the

more striking. The land in Scotland was now, with trifling

exceptions, let on leases for terms varying from twenty to

thirty years, and in farms of sufficient size to employ at

the least two or three ploughs. The unlimited issues of

government paper and the security afforded by these leases

induced the Scottish banks to afford every facility to landlords

and tenants to embark capital in the improvement of the

land. The substantial education supplied by the parish

schools, of which nearly the whole population could then avail

themselves, had diffused through all ranks such a measure of

intelligence as enabled them promptly to dhscern and skilfully

and energetically to take advantage of this spring-tide of

prosperity, and to profit by the agricultural information now

plentifully furnished by means of the Bath and West of England

Society, established in 1777; the Highland Society, instituted

in 1784; and the National Board of Agriculture, in 1793.

1815 to 1875.

The restoration of peace to Europe, and the re-enactment of

the Corn Laws in 1815, mark the beginning of another era in

the history of agriculture. The sudden return to peace-prices

was followed by a time of severe depression, low wages,

diminished rents and bad farming. The fall in prices was

aggravated, first by the unpropitious weather and deficient

harvest of the years 1816, 1817, and still more by the passing

in 1819 of the bill restoring cash payments, which, coming

into operation in 1821, caused serious embarrassment to all

persons who had entered into engagements at a depreciated

currency, which had now to be met with the lower prices of

an enhanced one. The frequency of select-committees and

commissions, which sat in 1814, 1821 and 1822, 1833 and 1836,

testifies to the gravity of the crisis. The years 1830-1833

are especially memorable for a disastrous outbreak of sheep-rot

and for agrarian outrages, caused partly by the dislike of

the labourers to the introduction of agricultural machines.

During this period of depression, which lasted till the 'forties,

want of confidence prevented any general improvement in agricultural

methods. At the same time, certain developments destined

to exercise considerable influence in later times are to be

noted. Before the close of the 18th century, and during the

first quarter of the 19th, a good deal had been done in the

way of draining the land, either by open ditches or by James

Elkington's system of deep covered drains. In 1834 James Smith

of Deanston promulgated his system of thorough draining and

deep ploughing, the adoption of which immeasurably improved

the clay lands of the country. The early years of the reign

of Queen Victoria witnessed the strengthening of the union

between agriculture and chemistry. The Board of Agriculture

in 1803 had commissioned Sir Humphry Davy to deliver a course

of lectures on the connexion of chemistry with vegetable

physiology. In 1840 the appearance of Chemistry in its

Application to Agriculture and Physiology by Justus von

Liebig set on foot a movement in favour of scientific husbandry,

the most notable outcome of which was the establishment by

Sir John Bennet Lawes in 1843 of the experimental station of

Rothamsted. Since Blith's time bone was the one new fertilizer

that had come into use. Nitrate of soda, Peruvian guano

and superphosphate of lime in the form of bones dissolved

by sulphuric acid were now added to the list of manures, and

the practice of analysing soils became more general. Manual

labour in farming operations began to be superseded by the

use of drills, hay-makers and horse-rakes, chaff-cutters and

root-pulpers. The reaping-machine, invented in 1812 by John

Common, improved upon by the Rev. Patrick Bell in England

and by Cyrus H. McCormick and others in America, and finally

perfected about 1879 by the addition of an efficient self-binding

apparatus, is the most striking example of the application

of mechanics to agriculture. Improvements in the plough,

harrow and roller were introduced, adapting those implements

to different soils and purposes. The steam-engine first took

the place of horses as a threshing power in 1803, but it was

not until after 1850 that it was applied to the plough and

cultivator. The employment of agricultural machines

received considerable impetus from the Great Exhibition of

1851. The much-debated Corn Laws, after undergoing various

modifications, and proving the fruitful source of business

uncertainty, social discontent and angry partisanship, were

finally abolished in 1846, although the act was not consummated

until three years later. Several other acts of the legislature

passed during this period exerted a beneficial influence on

agriculture. Of these, the first in date and importance

is the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836. Improvement was also

stimulated by the Public Money Drainage Acts 1846-1856, under

which government was empowered to advance money on certain

conditions for the improvement of estates. Additional

facilities were granted by the act passed in 1848 for

disentailing estates, and for burdening such as are entailed

with the share of the cost of certain specified improvements.

Meanwhile much had been done in the organization of agricultural

knowledge. Mention has already been made of the institution

of the Highland Society and the National Board of Agriculture.

These institutions were the means of collecting a vast amount of

statistical and general information connected with agriculture,

and by their publications and premiums made known the practices

of the best-farmed districts and encouraged their adoption

elsewhere. These associations were soon aided in their important

labours by numerous local societies which sprang up in all

parts of the kingdom. After a highly useful career, under

the presidency till 1813 of Sir John Sinclair, the Board of

Agriculture was dissolved in 1819, but left in its statistical

account, county surveys and other documents much interesting

and valuable information regarding the agriculture of the

period. In 1800 the original Farmer's Magazine came into

existence under the editorship of Robert Brown of Markle,

the author of the well-known treatise on Rural Affairs.

The Highland Society having early extended its operations

to the whole of Scotland, by and by made a corresponding

addition to its title, and as the Highland and Agricultural

Society of Scotland gradually extended its operations. In

1828, shortly after the discontinuance of the Farmers'

Magazine, its Prize Essays and Transactions began to be

issued statedly in connexion with the Quarterly Journal of

Agriculture. This society early began to hold a great show

of live stock, implements, &c. In 1842 certain Midlothian

tenant-farmers had the merit of originating an Agricultural

Chemistry Association (the first of its kind), by which funds

were raised for the purpose of conducting such investigations

as the title of the society implies. After a successful trial

of a few years this association was dissolved, transferring

its functions to the Highland and Agricultural Society.

In England the Agricultural Society was founded in 1838, with

the motto ``Practice with Science,'' and shortly afterwards

incorporated by royal charter. In 1845 the Royal Agricultural

College at Cirencester was incorporated. This era of revival

was not, however, without its calamities. The foot-and-mouth

disease first appeared about 1840, having been introduced,

as is supposed, by foreign cattle. It spread rapidly over

the country, affecting all domesticated animals except

horses, and although seldom attended by fatal results, caused

everywhere great alarm and loss. It was soon followed by the

more terrible lung-disease, or pleuro-pneumonia. In 1865 the

rinderpest, or steppe murrain, originating amongst the vast

herds of the Russian steppes, had spread westward over Europe,

until it was brought to London by foreign cattle. Several

weeks elapsed before the true character of the disease was

known, and in this brief space it had already been carried

by animals purchased in Smithfield market to all parts of the

country. After causing the most frightful losses, it

was at last stamped out by the resolute slaughter of all

affected animals and of all that had been in contact with

them. Severe as were the losses in flocks and herds from

these imported diseases, they were eclipsed by the ravages

of the mysterious potato blight, which, first appearing

in 1845, pervaded the whole of Europe, and in Ireland

especially proved the precursor of famine and pestilence.