h almost every aspect of
agriculture and stock raising, advocated horse-hoeing, had much to say
in favor of turnips, lucerne, clover and such crops, and contained
plates and descriptions of various plows, drills and other kinds of
implements. It also contained a detailed table of weather observations
for a considerable time, which may have given Washington the idea of
keeping his meteorological records.

Young's _Annals_ was an elaborate agricultural periodical not unlike in
some respects publications of this sort to-day except for its lack of
advertising. It contains records of a great variety of experiments in
both agriculture and stock raising, pictures and descriptions of plows,
machines for rooting up trees, and other implements and machines, plans
for the rotation of crops, and articles and essays by experimental
farmers of the day. Among its contributors were men of much eminence,
and we come upon articles by Mr. William Pitt on storing turnips, Mr.
William Pitt on deep plowing; George III himself contributed under the
pen name of "Ralph Robinson." The man who should follow its directions
even to-day would not in most matters go far wrong.

As one looks over these publications he realizes that the scientific
farmers of that day were discussing many problems and subjects that
still interest those of the present. The language is occasionally
quaint, but the principles set down are less often wrong than might be
supposed. To be sure, Tull denied that different plants require
different sorts of food and, notes Washington, "gives many unanswerable
Reasons to prove it," but he combats the notion that the soil ever
causes wheat to degenerate into rye. This he declares "as ridiculous as
it would be to say that an horse by feeding in a certain pasture will
degenerate into a Bull." And yet it is not difficult to discover farmers
to-day who will stubbornly argue that "wheat makes cheat." Tull also
advocated the idea that manure should be put on green and plowed under
in order to obtain anything like its full benefit, as well as many other
sound ideas that are still disregarded by many American farmers.

Washington eagerly studied the works that have been mentioned, and much
of his time when at Mount Vernon was devoted to experiments designed to
ascertain to what extent the principles that were sound in England could
be successfully applied in an American environment.

CHAPTER VI

A FARMER'S RECORDS AND OTHER PA