Agriculture is the art of cultivating the ground, more especially with the plough and in large areas or fields, in order to raise grain and other crops for man and beast; including the art of preparing the soil, sowing and planting seeds, removing the crops, and also the raising and feeding of cattle or other live stock. This art is the basis of all other arts, and in all countries coeval with the first dawn of civilization. At how remote a period it must have been successfully practised in Egypt, Mesopotamia, and China we have no means of knowing, but archaeologists have found evidence of agriculture being practised around 7000 BC. Egypt was renowned as a corn country in the time of the Jewish patriarchs, who themselves were keepers of flocks and herds rather than tillers of the soil. Naturally very little is known of the methods and details of agriculture in early times, though field archaeologists at Butser Ancient Farm in Hampshire have been conducting experiments for some years.
Among the ancient Greeks the implements of agriculture were very few and simple. Hesiod, who wrote a poem on agriculture as early as the eighth century BC, mentions a plough consisting of three parts, the share-beam, the draught-pole, and the plough-tail, but antiquarians are not agreed as to its exact form. The ground received three ploughings, one in autumn, another in spring, and a third immediately before sowing the seed. Manures were applied, and the advantage of mixing soils, as sand with clay or clay with sand, was understood. Seed was sown by hand, and covered with a rake. Grain was reaped with a sickle, bound in sheaves, thrashed, then winnowed by wind, laid in chests, bins, or granaries, and taken out as wanted by the family, to be ground.
Agriculture was highly esteemed among the ancient Romans. Cato, the censor, who was celebrated as a statesman, orator, and general, derived his highest honours from having written a voluminous work on agriculture. In his Georgics Virgil has thought the subject of agriculture worthy of being treated in the most graceful and harmoniousverse. The Romans used a great many different implements of agriculture. The plough is represented by Cato as of two kinds, one for strong, the other for light soils. Yarro mentions one with two mould-boards, with which, he says, 'when they plough, after sowing the seed, they are said to ridge'. Pliny mentions a plough with one mould-board, and others with a coulter, of which he says there were many kinds. Fallowing was a practice rarely deviated from by the Romans. In most cases a fallow and a year's crop succeeded each other. Manure was collected from nearly or quite as many sources as have been resorted to by the moderns. Irrigation on a large scale was applied both to arable and grasslands.
The Romans introduced their agricultural knowledge among the Britons, though it is known that the Britons were already practising agriculture, and during the most flourishing period of the Roman occupation large quantities of corn were exported from Britain to the Continent. During the time that the Angles and Saxons were extending their conquests over the country agriculture may have been neglected; but afterwards it was practised with some success among the Anglo-Saxon population, especially, as was generally the case during the middle ages, on lands belonging to the church. Swine formed at this time a most important portion of the live stock, finding plenty of oak and beech mast to eat.
The feudal system introduced by the Normans, though beneficial in some respects as tending to ensure the personal security of individuals, operated powerfully against progress in agricultural improvements. War and the chase, the two ancient and deadliest foes of husbandry, formed the most prominent occupations of the Norman princes and nobles. Thriving villages and smiling fields were converted into deer forests, vexatious imposts were laid on the farmers, and the serfs had no interest in the cultivation of the soil. But the monks of every monastery retained such of their lands as they could most conveniently take charge of, and these they cultivated with great care, under their own inspection, and frequently with their own hands. The various operations of husbandry, such as manuring, ploughing, sowing, harrowing, reaping, thrashing, winnowing, etc, are incidentally mentioned by the writers of those days; but it is impossible to collect from them a definite account of the manner in which those operations were performed.
The first English treatise on husbandry and the best of the early works on the subject was published in the reign of Henry VIII in 1534, by Sir A Fitzherbert, judge of the Common Pleas. It is entitled the Book of Husbandry, and contains directions for draining, clearing, and inclosing a farm, for enriching the soil, and rendering it fit for tillage. Lime, marl, and fallowing are strongly recommended. The subject of agriculture attained some prominence during the reign of Elizabeth I. The principal writers of that period were Tusser, Googe, and Sir Hugh Platt. Tusser's Five Hundredth Points of Good Husbandry (first complete edition published in 1580) conveys much useful instruction in metre, but few works of this time contain much that is original or valuable.
The first half of the seventeenth century produced no systematic work on agriculture, though several on different branches of the subject. About 1645 the field cultivation of red clover was introduced into England, the merit of this improvement being due to Sir Richard Weston, author of a Discourse on the Husbandry of Brabant and Flanders. The Dutch had devoted much attention to the improvement of winter roots, and also to the cultivation of clover and other artificial grasses, and the farmers and proprietors of England soon saw the advantages to be derived from their introduction. The cultivation of clover soon spread, and Sir Richard Weston seems also to have introduced turnips. Potatoes had been introduced during the latter part of the sixteenth century, but were not for long in general cultivation. A number of writers on agriculture appeared in England during the Commonwealth, the most important works on the subject being Blythe's Improver Improved and Hartlib's Legacy. The former writer speaks of a rotation, or rather alternation of crops, and well knew the use of lime, as also of other manures. In the eighteenth century the first name of importance in British agriculture is that of Jethro Tull, a gentleman of Berkshire, who began to drillwheat and other crops about the year 1701, and whose Horse-hoeing Husbandry was published in 1731.
Jethro Tull was a great advocate of the system of sowing crops in rows or drills with an interval between every two or three rows wide enough to allow of ploughing or hoeing to be carried on. After the time of Jethro Tull's publication no great alteration in British agriculture took place, until Robert Bakewell and others effected some important improvements in the breeds of cattle, sheep, and swine, in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The raising and maintenance of live stock, especially of sheep, was a characteristic of English farming from a very early time, and for several centuries the country had almost a monopoly in the supply of wool. To Bakewell we owe the breed of Leicestersheep. By the end of the nineteenth century it was a common practice to alternate green crops with grain crops, instead of exhausting the land with a number of successive crops of corn. A well-known writer on agriculture at this period, and one who did a great deal of good in diffusing a knowledge of the subject, was Arthur Young.
Scotland was for a long time behind England in agricultural progress. Great progress was made during the eighteenth century, however, especially in the latter half of it, turnips being introduced as a field-crop, and new implements such as the swing-plough and the thrashing-machine coming into general use. The construction of good roads through the country also gave agriculture a great impulse. During the wars caused by the French revolution of 1795 to 1814 the high price of agricultural produce led to an extraordinary improvement in agriculture all over Britain. The establishment of the institution called the National Board of Agriculture was also of very great service to British husbandry at this period. Though a private association it was assisted by an annual parliamentary grant, and prizes were given by it for the encouragement of experiments and improvements in agriculture. It existed from 1793 to 1816.
Among other societies which have greatly furthered the progress of agriculture in Britain, the chief are the Royal Agricultural Society of England, established in 1838; the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland, founded in 1783; and the Royal Agricultural Society of Ireland, instituted in 1841. The objects of these and similar societies were such as the following: to encourage the introduction of improvements in agriculture; to encourage the improvement of agricultural implements and farm buildings; the application of chemistry to agriculture; the destruction of insects injurious to vegetation; to promote the discovery and adoption of new varieties of grain, or other useful vegetables; to collect information regarding the management of woods, plantations, and fences; to improve the education of those supported by the cultivation of the soil; to improve the veterinary art; to improve the breeds of live stock, etc. Shows are held, at which prizes are distributed for live stock, implements, and farm produce.
Through the efforts of the above-mentioned and other societies, the investigations of scientific men, the general diffusion of knowledge among all classes, and the necessity of competing with producers in foreign countries, agriculture made vast strides in Britain during the nineteenth century. Among the chief improvements were deep ploughing and thoroughdraining By the introduction of new or improved implements the labour necessary to the carrying out of agricultural operations was greatly diminished, as by the steam thrashing-machine, the steam-plough, and the reaping-machine. The nineteenth century saw also the introduction of chemistry into agriculture in Britain. The organization of plants, the primary elements of which they are composed, the food on which they live, and the constituents of soils, were all investigated, and most important results obtained particularly with regard to manures and rotations. Artificial manures, in great variety to supply the elements wanted for plant growth, came into common use at the end of the nineteenth century, not only increasing the produce of lands previously cultivated, but extending the limits of cultivation itself. An improvement in all kinds of stock became more and more general, feeding was conducted on more scientific principles, and improved varieties of plants used as field crops were introduced at the same time. At the end of the nineteenth century was introduced the system of ensilage for preserving fodder in a green state. However, by the start of the 20th century writers were proclaiming that, chiefly owing to foreign competition, agriculture had become a very unprofitable industry in Britain.
It is only since the nineteenth century that much progress was made in perfecting implements and machinery for cultivating the soil, sowing seed, drilling, rolling, hoeing, reaping, digging, etc. The first application of steam to ploughing dates from 1770, when Richard Edgeworth took out a patent for a steam ploughing machine, but it was 1852 before such application proved of any economic value. As early as 1829 a reaping-machine was invented by the Reverend Mr. Bell of Carmylie, Forfarshire, which, in an improved form, was still in use at the start of the twentieth century when numerous mowing and reaping-machines of ingenious construction were also introduced, many of which not only cut down the grain, but also bind it up into sheaves. At the start of the twentieth century steam was extensively used as a motive power in thrashing, in chaff-cutting, turnip-slicing, and even in churning. Only to be replaced after the invention of the combustion engine with petrol-power. Mechanisation led to the enlargement of fields, with small fields being amalgamated by the destruction of separating hedgerows to enable mechanical tractors and other farm vehicles to operate efficiently. The effect upon wildlife in Britain was devastating, and public concern started to grow.
The Second World War revolutionized agriculture in Britain, and led to the development of intensive farming techniques known as 'factory farming' and new anonymous breeds of livestock being developed which mature very quickly. During the later half of the twentieth century the public in Britain rebelled against the inhumanity of intensive animal husbandry, typified by 'battery hens' in which thousands of hens are kept in individual tiny cages within massive warehouses, unable to stretch let alone move around, and free-range or more traditional animal husbandry started to reappear in commercial agriculture.
The twentieth century also saw the wide scale introduction of chemical fertilizers and insecticides, many of which were harmful to the consumers and from a public backlash emerged a return to traditional farming, known as organic farming. Research Agriculture
Alfa Romeo is an Italian motor-car manufacturer. The company was founded in 1906 as 'Societa Italiana Automobili Darracq' with the aim of manufacturing low cost Darracq motor cars. That company quickly ran into difficulties when the once booming car market began to falter. In 1910 the Darracq factory that had been built in the Portello district of Milan was sold to a group of Italian car enthusiasts who called themselves 'Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili' (ALFA). Success was to be short lived, because the company went into liquidation in 1915, and was then taken over by an engineer and entrepreneur called Nicola Romeo. After the Great War the company changed its name to 'Societa Anonima Ing. NicolaRomeo & Co.' having taken over several smaller firms: Officine Meccaniche di Saronno, Officine Meccaniche Tabanelli of Rome and Officine Ferroviarie Meridionali of Naples. Formally constituted by the notary, Federico Guasti, in Milan on February the 3rd 1918, the new company proclaimed its purpose to be 'the
construction and management of engineering, steel, agricultural, mining, chemical and quarrying companies, with particular emphasis on military, aviation, marine and agricultural equipment, internal combustion engines for all possible applications: aeroplanes, automobiles, locomotive and other wheeled transport.' Today Alfa Romeo is known for its range of sporty motor-cars. Research Alfa Romeo
The first patent for a 'horseless carriage' was taken out by Ramsay and Wildgoose in 1619, but the first man to successfully make a vehicle run along a road was the Frenchman Cugnot in 1770 when his carriage carried two people at 2 mph. In 1884 Gottlieb Daimler patented an engine based upon combustion on the Otto principle, revolutionary the motor vehicle industry which had previously been based upon steam engines. Research Motor Car
An animal is an organized and sentient living being. Life in the earlier periods of natural history was attributed almost exclusively to animals. With the progress of science, however, it was extended to plants. In the case of the higher animals and plants there is no difficulty in assigning the individual to one of the two great kingdoms of organic nature, but in their lowest manifestations, the vegetable and animal kingdoms are brought into such immediate contact that it becomes almost impossible to assign them precise limits, and to say with certainty where the one begins and the other ends. From form no absolute distinction can be fixed between animals and plants. Many animals, such as the sea-shrubs, sea-mats, etc, so resemble plants in external appearance that they were looked upon as such. With regard to internal structure no line of demarcation can be laid down, all plants and animals being, in this respect, fundamentally similar; that is, alike composed of molecular, cellular, and fibrous tissues. Neither are the chemical characters of animal and vegetable substances more distinct. Animals contain in their tissues and fluids a larger proportion of nitrogen than plants, whilst plants are richer in carbonaceous compounds than the former. In some animals, moreover, substances almost exclusively confined to plants are found. Thus the outer wall of Sea-squirts contains cellulose, a substance largely found in plant-tissues; whilst chlorophyll, the colouring-matter of plants, occurs in Hydra and many other lower animals.
Power of motion, again, though broadly distinctive of animals, cannot be said to be absolutely characteristic of them. Thus many animals, as oysters, sponges, corals, etc, in their mature condition are rooted or fixed, while the embryos of many plants, together with numerous fully developed forms, are endowed with locomotive power by means of vibratile, hair-like processes called cilia. The distinctive points between animals and plants which are most to be relied on are those derived from the nature and mode of assimilation of the food. Plants feed on inorganic matters, consisting of water, ammonia, carbonic acid, and mineral matters. They can only take in food which is presented to them in a liquid or gaseous state. The exceptions to these rules are found chiefly in the case of plants which live parasitically on other plants or on animals, in which cases the plant may be said to feed on organic matters, represented by the juices of their hosts. Animals, on the contrary, require organized matters for food. They feed either upon plants or upon other animals. But even carnivorous animals can be shown to be dependent upon plants for subsistence; since the animals upon which Carnivora prey are in their turn supported by plants. Animals, further, can subsist on solid food in addition to liquids and gases; but many animals (such as the Tapeworms) live by the mere imbibition of fluids which are absorbed by their tissues, such forms possessing no distinct digestive system.
Animals require a due supply of oxygen gas for their sustenance, this gas being used in respiration. Plants, on the contrary, require carbon dioxide. The animal exhales or gives out carbon dioxide as the part result of its tissue-waste, whilst the plant taking in this gas is enabled to decompose it into its constituent carbon and oxygen. The plant retains the former for the uses of its economy, and liberates the oxygen, which is thus restored to the atmosphere for the use of the animal. Animals receive their food into the interior of their bodies, and assimilation takes place in their internal surfaces. Plants, on the other hand, receive their food into their external surfaces, and assimilation is effected in the external parts, as are exemplified in the leaf-surfaces under the influence of sunlight. All animals possess a certain amount of heat or temperature which is necessary for the performance of vital action. The only classes of animals in which a constantly-elevated temperature is kept up are birds and mammals. The bodily heat of the former varies from 100 degrees Fahrenheit to 112 degrees Fahrenheit and of the latter from 96 degrees to 104 degrees. The mean or average heat of the human body is about 99 degrees Fahrenheit, and it never falls much below this in health. Below birds animals are named cold-blooded, this term meaning in its strictly physiological sense that their temperature is usually that of the medium in which they live, and that it varies with that of the surrounding medium, Warm-blooded animals, on the contrary, do not exhibit such variations, but mostly retain their normal temperature in any atmosphere. The cause of the evolution of heat in the animal body is referred to the union (by a process resembling ordinary combustion) of the carbon and hydrogen of the system with the oxygen taken in from the air in the process of respiration. Research Animal
A packhorse is a horse used to carry goods. Even with the invention of the combustion engine and the development of trucks and lorries, packhorses remain a useful means of carrying loads through difficult terrain such as mountains, where wheeled transport cannot operate. Research Packhorse
Antoine Laurent Lavoisier was a French scientist. He was born in 1743 at Paris and died in 1794. Educated at the Mazarin College he won a prize for the best method of lighting Paris and proved the modern theory of combustion. He was made a member of the Academy of Sciences in 1768 and in 1776 director of powder works. In 1794, owing to his position as fermier-general, he was condemned to the guillotine. The tribunal which condemned him answered the plea for sparing his life by 'We need no more scientists in France.'. Research Antoine Lavoisier
Fritz Haber was a German chemist. He was born in 1868 and died in 1934. His conversion of atmospheric nitrogen to ammonia opened the way for the synthetic fertilizer industry. His study of the combustion of hydrocarbons led to the commercial cracking or fractional distillation of natural oil (petroleum) into its components (for example, diesel, gasoline, and paraffin) . In electrochemistry, he was the first to demonstrate that oxidation and reduction take place at the electrodes; from this he developed a general electrochemical theory. At the outbreak of war, the German Army asked the Institute to investigate substitutes for explosive in shells, and poison gas was suggested. Haber, after watching early trials with gas shells, proposed releasing gas from cylinders. He became one of the principals in the German chemical warfare effort, devising weapons and gas masks, leading to protests against his Nobel Prize, awarded in 1918. Research Fritz Haber
Joseph Black was a Scottish chemist. He was born in 1728 at Bordeaux and died in 1799. He was educated at Glasgow University and studied chemistry under Dr. Cullen. In 1754 he was made Doctor of Medicine at Edinburgh, his thesis being on the nature of the causticity of lime and the alkalies, which he demonstrated to be due to the absence of the carbonic acidpresent in limestone, etc. In 1756 he extended and republished this thesis, and was appointed professor of medicine and lecturer on chemistry at Glasgow in succession to Dr. Cullen, whom he succeeded also in the Edinburgh chair in 1766. The discovery of carbonic acid is of interest not only as having preceded that of the other gases made by Priestley, Cavendish, and others, but as having preceded in its method the explanation given by Lavoisier of the part played by oxygen in combustion. His fame, however, chiefly rests on his theory of 'latent heat,' 1757 to 1763. Research Joseph Black
Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel was a German inventor. He was born in 1858 and died in 1913. In 1892 he invented an internal-combustion engine and in 1896 the refined diesel engine which bears his name. Research Rudolf Diesel
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
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Abbreviations
Research Agriculture
