of two shillings fourpence on broadcast-sowing, he observes,—"Reason is so often mistaken in matters of husbandry, that it is never fully to be trusted, even in deducing consequences evident from experiment itself." By which we may safely conclude that the experiment disappointed his expectations. It must be remembered, however, that Mr. Young was quite youthful and inexperienced at the time of conducting these trials, and that he possessed none of that scientific accuracy which characterizes the analysis of farm-experiments at Rothamstead or at Bechelbron. He says, with a diverting sincerity, that he was never "absent more than a single week at a time from the field of his observations without leaving affairs in charge of a trusty bailiff." He was too full of a constitutional unrest, and too much wedded to a habit of wide and rapid generalization, to acquit himself well in the task of laborious and minute observation.
His "Tours" through the English counties, and his "Letters to Farmers," were of great service, and were widely read. His "Farmer's Calendar" became a standard work. He entertained at one time the project of emigrating to America; but, abandoning this, he enlisted as Parliamentary reporter for the "Morning Post,"—walking seventeen miles to his country-home every Saturday evening, and returning afoot every Monday morning. His energy and industry were immense; his information upon all subjects connected with agriculture, whether British or Continental, entirely unmatched. The Empress of Russia sent three lads to him to be taught the arts of husbandry,—at which, I venture, his plodding neighbors who "made the ends meet" laughed incontinently. He had also pupils from France, America, Italy, Poland, Sicily, and Portugal.
In 1784 he commenced the publication of his famous "Annals of Agriculture," which grew to the enormous mass of forty-five volumes, and in the course of which dukes and princes and kings and republican generals were his correspondents. At the formation of the Board of Agriculture, he was named Secretary, with a salary and duties that kept him mostly in London, where he died at an advanced age in 1820.
It is a somewhat remarkable fact, that a man so distinguished in agriculture, so full of information, so earnest in advocacy of unproved methods of culture, so doggedly industrious, should yet never have undertaken farming on his own account save at a loss. I attribute this very much to his zeal for experiments. If he could establish, or controvert, some popular theory by the loss of his crop, he counted it no loss, but a gain to husbandry. Such men are benefactors; such men need salaries; and if any such are afloat with us, unprovided for, I beg to recommend them for clerkships in the Agricultural Bureau at Washington; and if the Commissioner shall hit upon one Arthur Young among the score of his protégés, the country will be better repaid than it usually is.
The "Practical Farmer," and other books of William Ellis, Hertfordshire, were in considerable vogue in the days of Young, and receive a little faint praise from him, while he says that through half his works he is "a mere old woman."
I notice that Ellis recommends strongly the ploughing-in of buckwheat,[1]—a practice which Washington followed extensively at Mount Vernon. He tells us that a cow is reckoned in his day to pay a clear profit of four pounds a year (for butter and cheese); but he adds, "Certain it is that no one knows what a cow will pay, unless she has her constant bellyful of requisite meat." And his talk about cider has such a relishy smack of a "mere old woman" that I venture to quote it.
"I have drank," he says, "such Pippin Cyder, as I never met with anywhere, but at Ivinghoe, just under our Chiltern Hills, where their Soil is partly a chalky Loam: It was made by its Owner, a Farmer, and on my Recommendation our Minister went with me to prove it, and
- ↑ Practical Farmer, by William Ellis. London, 1759.
