agreement, upon which I fell on, and made
it completely navigable from Stourbridge to Kidderminster, and carried
down many hundred tons of coal, and laid out near 1000L., and there it
was obstructed for want of money." [12]

Another of Yarranton's far-sighted schemes of a similar kind was one to
connect the Thames with the Severn by means of an artificial cut, at
the very place where, more than a century after his death, it was
actually carried out by modern engineers. This canal, it appears, was
twice surveyed under his direction by his son. He did, however,
succeed in his own time in opening up the navigation of the Avon, and
was the first to carry barges upon its waters from Tewkesbury to
Stratford.

The improvement of agriculture, too, had a share of Yarranton's
attention. He saw the soil exhausted by long tillage and constantly
repeated crops of rye, and he urged that the land should have rest or
at least rotation of crop. With this object he introduced clover-seed,
and supplied it largely to the farmers of the western counties, who
found their land doubled in value by the new method of husbandry, and
it shortly became adopted throughout the country. Seeing how commerce
was retarded by the small accommodation provided for shipping at the
then principal ports, Yarranton next made surveys and planned docks for
the city of London; but though he zealously advocated the subject, he
found few supporters, and his plans proved fruitless. In this respect
he was nearly a hundred and fifty years before his age, and the London
importers continued to conduct their shipping business in the crowded
tideway of the Thames down even to the beginning of the present century.

While carrying on his iron works, it occurred to Yarranton that it
would be of great national advantage if the manufacture of tin-plate
could be introduced into England. Although the richest tin mines then
known existed in this country, the mechanical arts were at so low an
ebb that we were almost entirely dependent upon foreigners for the
supply of the articles manufactured from the metal. The Saxons were
the principal consumers of English tin, and we obtained from them in
return nearly the whole of our tin-plates. All attempts made to
manufacture them in England had hitherto failed; the beating out of the
iron by hammers into laminae sufficiently thin and smooth, and the
subsequent distribution and fixing of the film of tin over the surface
of the i