Technology Adaptation: Agricultural Revolution in 17th–19th-Century Britain 265rots, turnips and parsnips. In the 1640s Samuel Hartlib published the correspond-
ence of farmers, recording their experiments and improvements with green
manuring, lucerne, turnips, flax and clover (Hartlib, 1646; Thirsk, 1985). A Mr
Buckner was studying a hundred varieties of grass, the Earl of Southampton the
impact of planting thousands of fruit trees in hedges, and a Mr Middleton the
keeping of mulberry trees, silkworms and the weaving of silk. The detailed records
were of individual improvers who were neither writers nor sometimes even literate.
As Joan Thirsk has put it ‘at all times Hartlib was alert to recommend in his papers
any names mentioned in his hearing of men and women who wrote nothing ...,
but were practical improvers’ (Thirsk, 1985).
Some authors, such as Jethro Tull (1731), wrote to publicize their ‘inventions’,
whilst others toured before they wrote: Edward Lisle (1757) visited farms in Wilt-
shire, Hampshire and Leicestershire to ask farmers and labourers questions on all
aspects of farming practice, ‘how to burn lime, how to improve meadows, what
plough was best. He stopped farmers at work in the fields, and asked them why they
did certain things; he experimented at home with the early sprouting of barley and
oats, and so on’ (Thirsk, 1985). Arthur Young published his first book in 1767. He
was always comprehensive, documenting for example more than 500 experiments in
the four volumes of the Farmers’ Tour of 1769. He was criticized by some contempor-
ary agricultural writers for including details of both successful and unsuccessful
experiments (see Gazley, 1973). He maintained, though, that his books were better
because they were founded upon experiments and journeys, and was critical of books
that had ‘only the inferior part of the experiments, that is the remarks and conclu-
sions: so that we have only the author’s reflections, instead of that authority which
enabled him to reflect; and from which we might draw very different conclusions.
Hence arises the difference ... the experiment is truth itself, the author’s conclusions,
matters of opinion, which we may either agree to, or reject, according to our private
notions’ (Young, 1767). By the late 1700s standards were thus higher, the detail
greater and books were treated more as basic references (Thirsk, 1985).
Another contribution to extension was the introduction of journals devoted
entirely to the views and practices of fanners. The Annals of Agriculture appeared in
1784 and continued for 45 volumes until 1815. Although about a quarter of the
articles were written by Young himself, the content ranges from reports of experi-
ments, minutes of tours, details of observations, recommendations for new prac-
tices, and general discussion on the state of British agriculture and the countryside.
This journal was soon followed by other national journals and periodicals, includ-
ing the Commercial and Agricultural Magazine in 1799, the Farmers Magazine in
1800, British Farmers’ Magazine in 1826, Journal of Agriculture in 1828, the Mark
Lane Express in 1832, and the Journal of the Royal Agricultural Society of England in
1840 (Goddard, 1989). As the more practical and experiment-based style became
increasingly popular, so farmers could more readily calculate whether an innova-
tion might be relevant to their particular conditions.
However, the number of farmers directly reached by these books and journals
may not have been large. The circulation of Annals, for example, was of the order