ngs for his personal history. His father owned landed property in
Oxfordshire, and Jethro was a University-man; he studied for the law,
(which will account for his address in a wordy quarrel,) made the tour
of Europe, returned to Oxfordshire, married, took the paternal
homestead, and proceeded to carry out the new notions which he had
gained in his Southern travels. Ill health drove him to France a second
time, from which he returned once more, to occupy the famous "Prosperous
Farm" in Berkshire; and here he opened his batteries afresh upon the
existing methods of farming. The gist of his proposed reform is
expressed in the title of his book, "The Horse-hoeing Husbandry." He
believed in the thorough tillage, at frequent intervals, of all
field-crops, from wheat to turnips. To make this feasible, drilling was,
of course, essential; and to make it economical, horse labor was
requisite: the drill and the horse-hoe were only subsidiary to the main
end of THOROUGH TILLAGE.

Sir Hugh Platt, as we have seen, had before suggested dibbling, and
Worlidge had contrived a drill; but Tull gave force and point and
practical efficacy to their suggestions. He gives no credit, indeed, to
these old gentlemen; and it is quite possible that his theory may have
been worked out from his own observations. He certainly gives a clear
account of the growth of his belief, and sustains it by a great many
droll notions about the physiology of plants, which would hardly be
admissible in the botanies of to-day.

Shall I give a sample?

"Leaves," he says, "are the parts, or bowels of a plant, which perform
the same office to sap as the lungs of an animal do to blood; that is,
they purify or cleanse it of the recrements, or fuliginous steams,
received in the circulation, being the unfit parts of the food, and
perhaps some decayed particles which fly off the vessels through which
blood and sap do pass respectively."

It does not appear that the success of Tull upon "Prosperous Farm" was
such as to give a large warrant for its name. His enemies, indeed,
alleged that he came near to sinking two estates on his system; this,
however, he stoutly denies, and says, "I propose no more than to keep
out of debt, and leave my estate behind me better than I found it. Yet,
owned it must be, that, had I, when I first began to make trials, known
as much of the system as I do now, the practice of it would have been
more profitable to me." Farmers in other parts of