y, Poland, Sicily, and
Portugal.

In 1784 he commenced the publication of his famous "Annals of
Agriculture," which grew to the enormous mass of forty-five volumes, and
in the course of which dukes and princes and kings and republican
generals were his correspondents. At the formation of the Board of
Agriculture, he was named Secretary, with a salary and duties that kept
him mostly in London, where he died at an advanced age in 1820.

It is a somewhat remarkable fact, that a man so distinguished in
agriculture, so full of information, so earnest in advocacy of unproved
methods of culture, so doggedly industrious, should yet never have
undertaken farming on his own account save at a loss. I attribute this
very much to his zeal for experiments. If he could establish, or
controvert, some popular theory by the loss of his crop, he counted it
no loss, but a gain to husbandry. Such men are benefactors; such men
need salaries; and if any such are afloat with us, unprovided for, I beg
to recommend them for clerkships in the Agricultural Bureau at
Washington; and if the Commissioner shall hit upon one Arthur Young
among the score of his _proteges_, the country will be better repaid
than it usually is.

* * * * *

The "Practical Farmer," and other books of William Ellis, Hertfordshire,
were in considerable vogue in the days of Young, and receive a little
faint praise from him, while he says that through half his works he is
"a mere old woman."

I notice that Ellis recommends strongly the ploughing-in of
buckwheat,[B]--a practice which Washington followed extensively at Mount
Vernon. He tells us that a cow is reckoned in his day to pay a clear
profit of four pounds a year (for butter and cheese); but he adds,
"Certain it is that no one knows what a cow will pay, unless she has her
constant bellyful of requisite meat." And his talk about cider has such
a relishy smack of a "mere old woman" that I venture to quote it.

"I have drank," he says, "such Pippin Cyder, as I never met with
anywhere, but at Ivinghoe, just under our _Chiltern_ Hills, where their
Soil is partly a chalky Loam: It was made by its Owner, a Farmer, and on
my Recommendation our Minister went with me to prove it, and gave it
his Approbation. This was made from the Holland Pippin: And of such a
wholesome Nature is the Pippin of any Sort above all others, that I
remember there is a Relation of its wonderful influences, I think it