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
The block-system is a system of working the traffic on railways according to which the line is divided into sections of three or four miles, with a signal and telegraphic connection at the end of each section. The essential principle of the system is that no train is allowed to enter upon any one section until the section is signalled wholly clear, so that between two successive trains there is not merely an interval of time, but also an interval of space. Research Block-System
A day is either the interval of time during which the sun is continuously above the horizon, or the time occupied by a revolution of the earth on its axis, embracing this interval (the period of light) as well as the interval of darkness. The day in the latter sense may be measured in more than one way. If we measure it by the apparent movement of the stars, caused by the rotation of the earth on its axis, we must call day the period between the time when a star is on the meridian and when it again returns to the meridian: this is a sidereal day. It is uniformly equal to 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.098 seconds. But more important than this is the solar day, or the interval between two passages of the sun across the meridian of any place. The latter is about 4 minutes longer than the former, owing to the revolution of the earth round the sun, and it is not of uniform length, owing to the varying speed at which the earth moves in its orbit and to the obliquity of the ecliptic. For convenience an average of the solar day is taken, and this gives us the mean solar or civil day of 24 hours, the difference between which the actual solar day at any time is the equation of time.
The length of the days and nights at any place varies with the latitude and season of the year, owing to the inclination of the earth's axis. In the first place, the days and nights are equal (twelve hours each) all over the world on the 21st of March and the 21st of September, which dates are called the vernal (spring) and autumnal equinoxes. Again, the days and nights are always of equal length at the equator, which, for this reason, is sometimes called the equinoctial line. With these exceptions, we find the difference between the duration of the day and the night varying more and more as we recede from the equator, and at the poles the year consists of one day of six months' duration, and one night of the same.
The Babylonians began the day at sun-rising; theJews at sun-setting; the Egyptians and Romans at midnight, as do most modern peoples. The civil day in most countries is divided into two portions of twelve hours each. The abbreviations PM. and AM. (the first signifying post meridiem, Latin for afternoon; the latter ante meridiem, forenoon) are requisite, in consequence of this division of the day. The Italians in some places reckon the day from sunset to sunset, and enumerate the hours up to twenty-four; the Chinese divide it into twelve parts of two hours each.
For astronomical purposes the day is divided into twenty-four hours instead of two parts of twelve hours. Formerly it began at noon, but since the 1st of January 1885, the day of twenty-four hours begins at midnight at Greenwich Observatory; and this reckoning is now generally adopted for astronomical purposes elsewhere than at Greenwich. The Greenwich day practically determines the date for all the world. At mid-day at Greenwich the date (day of the week and month) is everywhere the same, though there are all possible differences in naming the hour of the day. But mid-day at Greenwich is the only instant at which we ever have the same date all over the world. The meridian of midnight, which is then at 180 degrees east or west, goes on revolving, gradually bringing a new date to every place to the west of that line, but obviously not bringing that new date to the places immediately to the east of that line until twenty-four hours after. From this it follows that whereas places on the one side of the globe never have a different date except when midnight lies between them, places on the opposite side of the globe, and on different sides of the meridian of 180 degrees east Or west never have the same date except when midnight lies between them. The actual difference of time between Wellington in New Zealand and Honolulu in Hawaii is only about two hours; yet a person at Wellington may date a letter 9 o'clock AM 26th June, while another writing at the same instant at Honolulu dates his 11 o'clock AM 25th June.
In geography, a geyser (from the Icelandic geysir which in turn deribes from heysa meaning to gush or rush forth) is a term applied to natural springs of hot water of the kind that were first observed in Iceland. The geysers of Iceland, about a hundred in number, lie about 30 miles north west of Mount Hecia, in a plain covered by hot-springs and steaming apertures. The two most remarkable are the Great Geyser and the New Geyser or Strokkur (churn), the former of which throws up at times a column of hot water to the height of from 80 to 200 feet. The basin of the Great Geyser is about 70 feet across at its greatest diameter. The New Geyser, which is only 100 meters away, is much smaller in size. The springs are supposed to be connected with Mount Hecia, and the phenomenon of eruption has been explained by Tyndall as due to the heating of the walls of a fissure, whereby the water is slowly raised to the boiling point under pressure, and explodes into steam, an interval being required for the process to be repeated. The geysers of Iceland, however, were surpassed by those discovered in the Rocky Mountains in the Yellowstone Region of Wyoming Territory, the largest of which throw up jets of water from 90 to 250 feet high. The hot-lake district of Auckland, New Zealand, is also famous in possessing some of the most remarkable geyser scenery in the world. These phenomena are of three kinds: the puias (fire-springs), geysers continually or intermittently active; ngawhas or inactive puias, which emitsteam, but do not throw up columns of water; and waiariki or hot-water cisterns. This region is remarkable for the number of natural terraces containing hot-water pools or cisterns, and its lakes all filled at intervals by the boiling geysers and thermal springs, but the configuration of the country was considerably altered by the disastrous volcanic outbreak of 1886. Ngahapu or Ohopia, a circular rocky basin, 40 feet in diameter, in which a violent geyser is constantly ng up to the height of 10 or 12 feet, emitting dense clouds of steam, is one of the natural wonders of the southern hemisphere. Research Geyser
The name of Republicans was, in the earlier history of the United States, taken by the party formed by Jefferson, as distinguishing them from their Federalist opponents (later known as the Democratic Party), stigmatised as monarchists. In 1854 the name was revived, to be applied to a new political party, at first characterized primarily by opposition to the extension of slavery to the territories.
The compromise of 1850 had resulted in the disruption and decay of the Whig party. There was a brief interval before parties could be re-formed upon the basis of the slavery question purely. The passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act by the Democrats in 1854 caused a general coalition of Northern Free-Soilers, Whigs, Democrats, Know-Nothings and Abolitionists, united in opposition to that measure and the consequent repeal of the Missouri Compromise. At first known as 'Anti-Nebraska Men', the coalitionists took in that same year the name of Republicans. They at once won a plurality of Congress, and in 1856 held their first national convention at Philadelphia, which nominated Fremont and Dayton. Defeated then, in 1859 they again controlled the House. In 1860 Democratic divisions enabled them to elect Abraham Lincoln.
For the next' fourteen years the party, reinforced for a time by 'War Democrats', was supreme. It controlled the National Government, enlarged its powers by broad construction of the Constitution, carried on the American Civil War, abolished slavery, reconstructed the governments of the seceding States and controlled them, maintained the protective system and refunded the debt. It carried the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1864 and of Grant in 1868 and 1872. The Liberal Republican schism of 1872 indicated a reaction from the radical policy followed in regard to reconstruction, and was followed by extensive defeats in the tidal wave of 1874, due partly to official corruption in high places.
Yet the party managed, though barely, to carry the election of Hayes in 1876, and elected Garfield in 1880. In 1884 the nomination of Blaine caused the bolt of the mugwumps, and the election of a Democratic President. The party then became, more distinctly than in the years just preceding, the party of high protection. In 1888 it elected Harrison. Defeated in 1892, it was again successful in State elections in 1893. Its strength traditionally lay in the North. During the later part of the 19th century the Republican Party advocated a more stirring foreign policy than that of the Democrats, and larger expenditures for pensions and other national objects.
During the 20th century the Republican Party became more right-wing, represented by presidents such as Ronald Reagan, George Bush and George W Bush. Research Republican Party
Tide is a term applied to the alternate rising and falling of the sea, twice in each lunar day, to the attraction of the moon and the sun. The movement is most marked on shores which shelve gradually. The average interval between successive high tides is twelve hours and twenty-five minutes, half the time between successive passages of the moon across a given meridian. The height of the tide varies rhythmically. The highest, or spring, tides gradually change to the lowest, or neap, tides. The interval between successive spring tides is half a lunar month. Usually spring tides occur at or near the time when the moon is new or full, and neap tides when the moon is in the first or third quarter. This fact leading to an early realisation of the moon being the main cause of the tide.
The mass of the moon attracts the oceanic waters, which, being fluid, make a little peak pointing directly from the earth's centre to the centre of the moon; this peak is held on the line of centres while the earth rotates beneath it. To observers on the earth the peak of water appears to move. At the antipodes of this peak, on the side of the earth remote from the moon, a second peak occurs, because the distant water is again attracted to the line of centers. These peaks are the successive high tides.
The lunar attraction is coupled with a similar attraction due to the sun, but only of about just under one half the magnitude. When the line of centers of the earth and the moon approximates to the line of centers of the earth and the sun, i.e. at full and new moon, the combined solar and lunar tides produce the spring tides. When the two lines of centers are at right angles, at the first and third quarters, the solar attraction reduces the lunar effect, and produces the neap tides. The neap tides are, on average, 5:13 of the spring tides.
The above explanation of the outstanding tidal features merely explains the phenomena as they would occur upon an earth with a uniform film of water and without land mass. The interposition of the great land masses, and the differences in the oceanic depths, causes variations in the tides along the coasts. Research Tide
Anoplotherium was an extinct genus of the Ungulata or Hoofed Quadrupeds, forming the type of a distinct family, which were in many respects intermediate between the swine and the true ruminants. These animals were pig-like in form, but possessed long tails, and had a cleft hoof, with two rudimentary toes. Some of them were as small as a guinea-pig, others as large as an ass. Six incisors, two canines, eight pre-molars, and six molars existed in each jaw, the series being continuous, no interval existing in the jaw. Research Anoplotherium
Loricera is a genus of genus of beetles of the family Carabidae. The European species Loricera pilicornis is about seven millimetres in length and uniquely has long bristles on the first six segments of its antennae. The elytra has 11 regular striae and on either side, in the third interval, there are three round depressions. They live in wet, swampy ground in bogs and beside water, and hibernate in groups. Research Loricera
The salmon (Salmo salar) is a fish of the Salmonidae family. Salmon are hatched in fresh water, and make for the sea, where most of their food is found, usually in their third year. When first hatched the infant salmon are known by the name of 'alevin'. They soon attain the 'parr' stage, being then olive-brown in colour with dark transverse bands and red spots. When two years old the silvery 'smelt' stage is attained.
Salmon generally re-enter the river to spawn for the first time when some three and a half years old during the autumn months, when they are known as ' Grilse'. On the way up-stream the fishfeed scarcely at all, and so lose much in condition. Often the journey is arduous, necessitating the leaping of falls and other obstacles. At this time the fish lose their silvery tint, and the males are known as 'red fish', the females as 'black fish'. Savage fights may take place between the males, and their jaws undergo a strange modification, often assuming a hooked or beak-like form. Having reached the gravely shallows suitable for spawning, trough-shaped depressions known as 'redds' are excavated by the fish with their tails, and in these the hen- fish deposit their eggs, loosely covering them with silt. It is at this period that many eggs become fertilised by trout, which seize the opportunity to do so when the cock salmon is otherwise engaged repulsing rivals of his own species. It is doubtful if salmon spawn more than three or four times, as the procedure is very exhaustive, and an interval of some years may elapse between successive spawnings. In the River Tay in Scotland the salmon attains a weight of over eighty pounds. Research Salmon
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Agriculture
