The suffering among the people was often intense, famines frequently occurred, and so little was done to furnish suitable winter food and shelter for the stock, that a large part of the cattle perished every winter, especially in the more northerly parts of the island. The proportion thus dying annually has been estimated at one fifth of the whole number in the country, while frequently the most terrible murrain swept off a far larger proportion. No hoed crops or edible vegetables were cultivated, and even as late as the reign of Henry VIII. Queen Catharine was obliged to send to Flanders or Holland for salad to supply her table. Neither Indian corn, nor potatoes, nor squashes, nor carrots, nor cabbages, nor turnips were known in England till after the beginning of the 10th century. The peasants subsisted chiefly upon bread made of barley, ground in the quern or hand mill, and baked by themselves. The tenant peasantry had no security for their property till after the middle of the 15th century. If the estate was sold by the landlord, they were obliged to quit all, giving up even their standing crops without compensation.

They were liable for the debts of the landlord to an amount equal to their whole property, and it was not till after that time that they were held only for the amount of rent due from them. This picture of the misery and suffering which prevailed in Britain will give a fair idea of the state of things in Europe generally at the same time. Rather more attention, however, was paid to the culture of the soil in the religious establishments, whose tenancy was more secure. Under the direction of the monks extensive improvements were made in draining swamps and reclaiming extensive tracts from the sea. The feudal system, introduced into England soon after the Norman conquest in the latter part of the 11th century, checked progress in agricultural improvement. The crusades elevated the condition of the peasant in some degree, by increasing the value and importance of his labor, by making the acquisition of land somewhat easier, and by withdrawing from the country many ignorant and despotic nobles, some of whom returned with a profitable recollection of the far higher culture and fertility of the East. But the agriculture of this whole period was generally as low as was possible in an age making any pretension to civilization. - We may fix upon the 16th century as the time when Europe awoke from its long slumber.

From that time to the present, the gradual elevation of the middle and lower classes has continued, and agriculture has steadily advanced. The first work on agriculture published in England was the "Boke of Husbandrie," in 1523, by Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, who styles himself "a farmer of 40 years' standing." This was followed by another volume by the same author on land surveying. In these works Fitzherbert poincs out the prevailing practices of his time, condemning some and approving oth-ers. "A housebande cannot thryve," says he, "by his come without cattell, nor by his cattell without corne;" and he adds, "Shepe, in myne opinion, is the most profitablest cattell that any man can have." From him it appears that marl was in common use in his day, as it had been in the island even when it was invaded by the Romans before the Christian era. Thomas Tusser's "Five Hundred Points of Good Husbandry," in a sort of doggerel verse, followed a quarter of a century later, and went through many editions. The editor of one published in 1812 says that he found difficulty in procuring a complete copy, "a proof that what was intended for practical use had been sedulously applied to that purpose.

The copies were passed from father to son, till they crumbled away in the bare shifting of the pages, and the mouldering relic only lost its value by the casual mutilation of time." Tusser mentions carrots, cabbages, and turnips, as having just been introduced as kitchen vegetables. Then appeared "The Whole Art of Husbandry," by Barnaby Goocre; "The Jewel House of Art and Nature," by Sir Hugh Platt, from whom we first hear of the introduction of white clover into cultivation in England; and in 1649 appeared the "English Improver" of Walter Blithe (afterward revised and called the " Improver Improved"), a work full of judicious maxims and sound advice, giving us an insight into the prevailing practices of that time. Sir Richard Weston wrote about the same time on the husbandry of Brabant and Flanders, under the name of Samuel Hartlib, who himself made important contributions to agricultural literature. But the experiments and writings of Jethro Tull, in the early part of the 18th century, are among the first important attempts at real progress in the agriculture of modern times.

Writers before his time had confined themselves mainly to plain statements of the practical details of farming, recommending such new practices as appeared to them worthy of adoption, and condemning the errors of their contemporaries. Tull struck out new paths of practice, invented new modes of culture, and his investigations into the principles of fertility fairly entitle him to the credit of being a great original discoverer, though the errors into which he fell in his zealous enthusiasm brought more or less temporary discredit upon his whole theory. But we can excuse his mistakes when we consider that he, like all his predecessors, was groping in the dark, before chemistry and geology had made known the elements of the soil and of plants, and shown how the latter derive their support and nourishment. Tull invented and introduced the horse hoe and drill husbandry. The latter had, indeed, been known previously in Spain, and according to some in Germany also, but it was not known to any extent in England. He also invented the threshing machine, though the flail was almost universally used in England till the close of the last century.

His doctrine that plants derive their nourishment from minute particles of soil, and that repeated and thorough pulverization is therefore necessary not only as a preliminary preparation, but during the growth of the plant, led directly to the practice of drilling grain crops, and the awkwardness and prejudice of his workmen led to the introduction of the drilling machine and the horse hoe as substitutes for hand labor. So far Tull was right in practice, however incorrect his theory may have been. The best practical farmers of the present day believe in frequent, deep, and thorough pulverization of the soil, not because the plant is supposed to live on minute particles of earth, but to admit air and moisture freely to the roots. Tull's theory of the nutrition of plants has not been without its followers, however, Duhamel himself having labored to spread it. Tull believed to some extent in the use of manures, but chiefly as di-viders of the soil, as a means of improving its physical texture, and not because he supposed them to furnish any nutriment to the plants themselves.