Jethro Tull
from The Penny Cyclopædia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, 1843
TULL, JETHRO, a gentleman of moderate fortune, who
lived at the beginning of the last century, and zealously devoted a
great part of his life to the improvement of agriculture. He possessed
a small estate near Hungerford, on the borders of Oxfordshire and
Berkshire, and has generally been considered as the father of the drill
and horse-hoeing husbandry. Having observed the good effects of the
cultivation of many plants in regular rows, and of frequently stirring
the intervals between them, as has been done from time immemorial by
gardeners, he attempted to introduce this system into the field, and
invented many ingenious implements for diminishing the labour of
hand-drilling and hoeing. The success which attended his first
experiments, on a good, deep loam, confirmed his expectations, and led
him to a theory, which was the cause of his ultimate ruin, and threw
discredit on the whole system, which on other respects was founded on
sound principles. Observing that, by means of assiduous cultivation and
stirring of the soil around the roots of growing plants, he produced a
greater luxuriance of growth than by common methods, without any
addition of manure for several years, he concluded rashly that the
earths very finely divided, together with moisture, constituted the
whole of the food of plants, and that, consequently, stirring and
pulverizing the soil was a complete substitute for manuring. Having
fully established this erroneous principle in his own mind, he exerted
all his ingenuity to effect the most pulverization of the soil. In the
first place all the seeds were to be sown in rows at such a distance
that a plough or other stirring-instrument drawn by a horse might
conveniently be used in the intervals. From this circumstance his
system was called the horse-hoeing husbandry. The immense advantage
which would arise from the cultivation of waste lands in distant parts
of the kingdom, if the increased labour of men and horses were a
perfect substitute for manure, where it could not well be procured,
made many clever men look upon Tull's system as a most wonderful
discovery; and the first trials appeared to be so successful, that the new husbandry, as it was called, was strongly recommended for general adoption.
The great reluctance with which any new system is
adopted by the mass of practical farmers prevented the new husbandry
from becoming universal; and only some men of a theoretical turn fully
adopted the notions of Jethro Tull. All those who persevered in the
practice of it, neglecting to recruit their lands by a judicious
addition of manure, found to their cost that, however good the crops
they might have for a time, by continually stirring the soil, it became
totally exhausted at last, so as to produce barrenness, which requires
a long course of expensive manuring to remove, and was the cause of
serious ultimate loss. Tull himself, who adhered to his principles to
the last, like most original inventors, and expended large sums in
experiments, and in the construction of a variety of new and ingenious
implements, became so embarrassed that he lost all his property, and it
is said, died in prison, where he had been put by some merciless
creditor. (British Husbandry, 'Farmer's Series of the Library of Useful Knowledge,' published by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge.)
The unhappy fate of the author of the system, and the loss sustained by
its principal abettors, threw such a discredit upon it that for a long
time not even the most useful part of it was retained, Had Tull
introduced the row culture, as it is practiced in Lombardy, from which
he borrowed some of his principal operations, and joined judicious
manuring with his horse-hoeing, he would have had the merit of
orginating, in England, at least, the greatly improved system of
drill-husbandry which has since been generally adopted wherever it can
be conveniently executed; and the sowing of seeds broadcast would have
long since been confined to artificial grasses, which, being intended
for pasture, cannot grow too closely together. The cleaning of the soil
from weeds, and the exposure of a great part of the surface to the
influence of the atmosphere, would have entirely superseded fallows,
and a proper application of manure would have kept up the fertility.
Tull published a treatise on his new mode of
cultivation in 1731, in which his principles were explained and
calculations made, founded on his early experiments of the immense
profit which would accrue in the course of years by adopting his
practice. Change of crop would no longer be necessary; rotations
useless; the most profitable crops could be raised year after year
without diminution and the soil be kept in a state of perpetual
fertility. Such were the visions of a man of considerable abilities,
led into error by his own sanguine imagination. Had the soil of Tull's
farm been of a poor gravelly or sandy nature, he would soon have
discovered his error by a few experiments; but working on a good deep
loam, and continually keeping it stirred and pulverized, it required a
much longer time to exhaust it; but at last it was completely
exhausted, and the owner was ruined.
The fate of Tull and his system may be a warning to
those who are fond of building ingenious theories on a few imperfect
experiments, and a caution to wait till the facts are fully established
before they draw practical conclusions from them.
Jethro Tull first published, in 1731, detached
essays on his new mode of cultivation, which were afterwards, in 1751,
collected into one volume, with copious notes by himself.
In 1822 the late Mr. Cobbett edited a new edition of
Tull's works, with an introduction by himself, which like everything
written by that perspicuous writer, is full of useful remarks. Cobbett
fully appreciated the value of the practical part of Tull's system and
strongly recommended it in his 'Cottage Economy.' He showed there, by
reference to actual experiments in a garden, how greatly the stirring
of the soil around the roots of growing plants assisted their growth,
and the advantage of allowing a certain space to every plant to admit
of this stirring. Tull had cultivated roots with great success
according to his system; and as long as the organic matter in the soil
was not exhausted, the success fully proved the correctness of his
practice. The greatest obstacle which Tull had to contend with was the
obstinacy of his labourers, who thought him quite mad when he ordered
them to sow only two rows ten inches apart on a stitch of land four
feet six inches wide, leaving forty-four inches between each double row
for the working of the plough. He was forced to put his hand to the
plough himself; and in this as well as in his other trials he was
greatly assisted by the encouragement and actual help of Lord Ducie of
Moreton, whose descendant, the earl of Ducie, is now one of the most
zealous and active patrons of all improvements of tillage. Whatever may
have been the errors of Tull in hastily adopting an erroneous theory,
he has many excuses in the received opinions of his time. Van Helmont's
experiment of the willow prepared the minds of scientific men for the
theory that water alone was sufficient for all purposes of vegetation;
and Tull seems to have supposed some papulum
in the ultimate particles of earth, which with water furnishes all that
the soil requires to produce active vegetation; and when we consider
that by the most recent experiments it has been fully proved that four
gases - oxygen, hydrogen, carbonic acid, and azote or nitrogen - with a
very small proportion of earth, form the whole elements of vegetable
and animal substances, it is not so great an error to suppose that air,
water, and earth, which contain all these elements, may be sufficient
for vegetable or animal increase. This was the whole error of Tull.
From: The Penny Cyclopædia of the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, by George Long, publ. C. Knight (1843) pages 344-345.
Links:
Biography from Agricultural Biography: Writings of the British Authors, 1854.
Biography from The New American Cyclopaedia: A Popular Dictionary of General Knowledge, 1858
Today in Science History web page for day of Jethro Tull's baptism, 30 Mar 1674.
A quotation by Jethro Tull.
