Arthur Young, F.R.S.: Farmer

Abstract

ANALOGIES between the agricultural con-ditions in the later years of the eighteenth century and those of to-day render opportune the publication of this study of Arthur Young. Agriculture at both periods was depressed. Countrymen were flocking to the towns, and the land was being neglected and allowed to become derelict. A revolution in farming practice, coupled with the introduction of new crops, is to be contrasted with possible methods to-day, very different in that no new bulk-feed or other crops are being advocated. There was a fight to combat the food-shortage and high taxes of the Napoleonic period, as there was in the Great War-and must be in all future wars. The enclosure of lands-twenty-two million acres during Young's period-allowed the development of arable farming for corn, while the growth of winter feed, especially turnips, encouraged the carrying over of stock from year to year and eliminated salt meat from our dietary. The introduction of cabbage, the popularization of potatoes and the regular use of clover assisted in producing an alternation of crops and were thus of importance. To-day, in contrast, we have a huge manufacturing population to be fed, while much land has gone out of cultivation, and many farms show increasingly depleted and weedy soils which only an evolution in scientific practice or a revolution in the attitude of the State can rectify.

Sheep and Turnips

Being the Life and Times of Arthur Young, F.R.S., First Secretary to the Board of Agriculture. By Amelia Defries. Pp. xviii + 235. (London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1938.) 7s. 6d. net.