ursus in obliquum verso perrumpit aratro,
Exercetque frequens tellurem, atque imperat arvis."

That "_imperat_" looks like something more than weed-killing; it looks
like subjugation; it looks like pulverization at the hands of an
imperious master.

But behind all of Tull's exaggerated pretension, and unaffected by the
noisy exacerbation of his speech, there lay a sterling good sense, and a
clear comprehension of the existing shortcomings in agriculture, which
gave to his teachings prodigious force, and an influence measured only
by half a century of years. There were few, indeed, who adopted
literally and fully his plans, or who had the hardihood to acknowledge
the irate Jethro as a teacher; yet his hints and his example gave a
stimulus to root-culture, and an attention to the benefits arising from
thorough and repeated tillage, that added vastly to the annual harvests
of England. Bating the exaggerations I have alluded to, his views are
still reckoned sound; and though a hoed crop of wheat is somewhat
exceptional, the drill is now almost universal in the best cultivated
districts; and a large share of the forage-crops owe their extraordinary
burden to horse-hoeing husbandry.

Even the exaggerated claims of Tull have had their advocates in these
last days; and the energetic farmer of Lois-Weedon, in Northamptonshire,
is reported to be growing heavy crops of wheat for a succession of
years, without any supply of outside fertilizers, and relying wholly
upon repeated and perfect pulverization of the soil.[10] And Mr. Way,
the distinguished chemist of the Royal Society, in a paper on "The Power
of Soils to absorb Manure,"[11] propounds the question as follows:--"Is
it likely, on theoretical considerations, that the air and the soil
together can by any means be made to yield, without the application of
manure, and year after year continuously, a crop of wheat of from thirty
to thirty-five bushels per acre?" And his reply is this:--"I confess I
do not see why they should not do so." A practical farmer, however, (who
spends only his wet days in-doors,) would be very apt to suggest here,
that the validity of this _dictum_ must depend very much on the original
constituents of the soil.

Under the lee of the Coombe Hills, on the extreme southern edge of
Berkshire, and not far removed from the great highway leading from Bath
to London, lies the farmery where this restless, petulant, suffering,
earnest, clear-sighted Tull