[15] See an article by Mr. Bishop, on 'Locomotion of Animals,' in 'English Cyclopædia.'
Present and former condition of the country--Progress of cultivation--Evil influence of feudalism--State of agriculture in the sixteenth century--Modern improvements--Prices of wheat--Increased breadth of land under cultivation--Average consumption of wheat--Implements of agriculture now in use--Number of agriculturists in Great Britain.
It is the remark of foreigners, as they travel from the sea-coast to London, that the country is a garden. It has taken nineteen centuries to make it such a garden. The marshes in which the legions of Julius Cæsar had to fight, up to their loins, with the Britons, to whom these swamps were habitual, are now drained. The dense woods in which the Druids worshipped are now cleared. Populous towns and cheerful villages offer themselves on every side. Wherever the eye reaches there is cultivation. Instead of a few scattered families painfully earning a subsistence by the chace, or by tilling the land without the knowledge and the instruments that science has given to the aid of manual labour,--that cultivation is carried on with a systematic routine that improves the fertility of a good season, and diminishes the evils of a bad. Instead of the country being divided amongst hostile tribes, who have little communication, the whole territory is covered with a network of roads, and canals, and navigable rivers, and railroads, through which means there is an universal market, and wherever there is demand there is instant supply. Rightly considered, there is no branch of production which has so largely benefited by the power of knowledge as that of agriculture. It was ages before the great physical changes were accomplished which we now behold on every side; and we are still in a state of progress towards the perfection of those results which an over-ruling Providence had in store for the human race, in the gradual manifestation of those discoveries which have already so changed our condition and the condition of the world.
The history of cultivation in Great Britain is full of instruction as regards the inefficiency of mere traditional practice and the slowness with which scientific improvement establishes its dominion. It is no part of our plan to follow out this history; but a few scattered facts may not be without their value.