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ARTHUR YOUNG
195

successor made a fortune out of it. At a third farm he spent nine years, with the sensation of having been all the time 'in the jaws of a wolf.'[1] He had, he says, tried 3000 experiments; and must therefore be reckoned wise if we may invert Darwin's criterion that a fool is a man who never tried an experiment. There is, however, such a thing as being wise for others instead of for oneself. Whether Young's general views were sound is more than I know. They were at least stimulating. He was becoming well known to agricultural reformers, and from 1773 to 1776 he travelled in Ireland, where he was, for a short time, agent to Lord Kingsborough's estates in County Cork. Whatever was the result to Lord Kingsborough, Young's experience was embodied in a book upon Ireland second only in value to the French travels. He settled again at Bradfield upon his mother's property, and there, after a time, started a new project. Next to the farming without experience, one of the most promising roads to ruin that can be suggested is starting a serious and scientific periodical. Young accordingly in 1738 set up the Annals of Agriculture, which was

  1. See also Young's statement in Annals of Agriculture, vol. xv.