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
In the first ages of Christianity numerous churches were founded by the apostles and their successors in Greek-speaking countries; in Greece itself, in Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Asia Minor, Thrace, and Macedonia. These were subsequently called Greek, in contradistinction to the churches, in which the Latintongue prevailed. The removal of the seat of empire by Constantine to Constantinople (Istanbul), and the subsequent separation of the eastern and western empires afforded the opportunity for diversities of language, modes of thinking, and customs to manifest themselves, and added political causes to the grounds of separation. During the earliest period the chief seats of influence in the Eastern Church were Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria, the seat of that mystical philosophy, by which the orientalchurch was distinguished. In 341, soon after the synod of Antioch, the rivalry between the Bishop of -Rome and the Bishop of Constantinople began to assume importance, and before 400 differences of doctrine with respect to the procession of the Holy Spirit appeared. The council of Chalcedon in 451 accorded to the eastern bishop the same honours and privileges in his own diocese as those of the Bishop of Rome, and in 484 each bishop excommunicated the other.
The title of (Ecumenical Patriarch was assumed by John, Bishop of Constantinople, in 588, and in the following year the phrase 'Filioque' ('and the Son') was added by the Latins to the Nicene creed (which now read 'proceeding from the father and the son'), an addition to which the Greek Church was opposed.
In 648 PopeTheodore deposed Patriarch Paul II; but a reconciliation of the churches was effected at the Council of Rome in 680. The doctrines of the Greek Church were defined by John Damascenus in 730. The disruption was hastened by the banishment of Ignatius by Michael the Drunken and the consecration of Photius in 858. The PopeNicholas I and Photius excommunicated each other in 867. The schism was temporarily healed after the death of Photius, but Michael Cerularius reopened it by charging the Latins with heterodoxy. He was excommunicated by Leo IX in 1054, and in turn excommunicated the pope in the same year, since which the Greeks have been severed from the Roman communion, though the Russo-Greek Church was not separated until the 12th century.
The presence of the Crusaders in the East aggravated the quarrel; Latin patriarchates were established in Antioch and Jerusalem, and, though on the capture of Constantinople by the Crusaders a Latin patriarchate was set up there in 1204, the schism was revived there as soon as the Latinempire fell in 1262. .Reunion was proposed in 1273 by Patriarch Joseph, and effected, with the acknowledgment of the pope as primate, at the council of Lyons in 1274. The union, however, was annulled in 1282 by Emperor Andronicus II, and in 1283 and 1285 by synods of Constantinople. It was again effected under John Palasologus at Florence in 1439, but was repudiated in 1443 by the Patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.
In 1453, when the patriarch fled from the Turks, a schismatic Gregory Scholarius was chosen in his place. In 1575 unsuccessful negotiations were commenced with a view to union with the Lutherans, and in 1723 the English bishops even proposed that the Greek and Anglican churches should unite, a proposal revived by the Archbishop of Moscow in 1866. The claims of the czar in 1853 to the protectorate of the Greek churches in Turkey was one of the causes of the Crimean War.
The Greek Church is the only church which holds that the Holy Ghost proceeds from the Father only; the Roman Catholic and Protestant Churches deriving the Holy Ghost from the Father and the Son. Like the Roman Catholic Church it has seven sacraments - baptism; chrism; penance, preceded by confession; the eucharisfc; ordination;
marriage; and unction. Research Greek Church
The zodiac was the name given by the ancient Greeks to the heavens. It was an imaginary belt in the celestial sphere, extending about 80 degrees on either side of the ecliptic, the apparent path of the Sun among the stars. The width of the zodiac was determined originally so as to include the orbits of the Sun and Moon and of the five planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn) that were known to the people of ancient times.
The zodiac is divided into 12 sections of 300 degrees each, which are called the signs of the zodiac. Starting with the vernalequinox and then proceeding eastward along the ecliptic, each of the divisions is named for the constellation situated within its limits in the second century BC. The names of the zodiacal signs are Aries, the Ram; Taurus, the Bull; Gemini, the Twins; Cancer, the Crab; Leo, the Lion; Virgo, the Virgin; Libra, the Balance; Scorpio, the Scorpion; Sagittarius, the Archer; Capricorn, the Goat; Aquarius, the Water Bearer; and Pisces, the Fish. Because of the precession of the equinoxes about the ecliptic, a 26,000-year cycle, the first point of Aries retrogrades about 10 degrees in 70 years, so that the sign Aries today lies in the constellationPisces. In about 24,000 years, when the retrogression will have completed the entirecircuit of 3600, the zodiacal signs and constellations will again coincide.
It is believed that the zodiacal signs originated in Mesopotamia as early as 2000 BC . The Greeks adopted the symbols from the Babylonians and passed them on to the other ancient civilisations. The Egyptians assigned other names and symbols to the zodiacal divisions. The Chinese also adopted the 12-fold division, but called the signs rat, ox, tiger, hare, dragon, serpent, horse, sheep, monkey, hen, dog, and pig. Independently, the Aztec Indians devised a similar system. Research Zodiac
Heraclius was a Roman emperor of the East. he was born in about 575 at Cappadocia and died in 641. The son of Heraclius, exarch of Africa, at the head of a fleet from Carthage, in 610, he assisted in dethroning Phocas, the murderer and successor of the Emperor Mauritius, and himself ascended the throne. In a succession of splendid victories he crushed the Persians under Chosroes; but the energy of his earlier years seems to have worn itself out, and he made no effort to check the victorious progress of Mohammed. Before his deathSyria, Palestine, Mesopotamia, and Egypt had fallen under the dominion of the caliphs. He was succeeded by his son, Constantine III. Research Heraclius
James Silk Buckingham was an English traveller, writer, and lecturer. He was born in 1786 near Falmouth and died in 1855. After trying several professions, and wandering over a great part of the world, he came to London, where he established the Athenaeum, well known as a literary journal. He also published his journal of travel in Palestine (1822), in Arabia (1825), in Mesopotamia (1827), and in Assyria and Media (1830). In 1832 he was chosen member of parliament for Sheffield, and retained his seat until 1837. Subsequently he made a tour of three years in America. In 1843 he became secretary to the British and Foreign Institute. He also published volumes on his Continental tours and an autobiography. Research James Buckingham
Sir Mark Sykes was a British soldier, explorer and politician. He was born in 1879 and died in 1919. Educated at Brussels and Jesus College, Cambridge, he served in the South African War and from 1905 until 1907 was honourable attache at the British embassy at Constantinople (Istanbul) during which time he travelled Asiatic Turkey and mapped north-west Mesopotamia.
During the Great War he raised a battalion of the Yorkshire Regiment, and acted as special emissary to Petrograd and the Caucasus, and later Mesopotamia. He was member of parliament for Central Hull from 1911 until 1919, and was an enthusiastic supporter of Zionism. Research Mark Sykes
Sir Charles Vere Francis Townshend was an English soldier and politician. He was born in 1861 and died in 1924. He entered the Royal Marines in 1881, and saw service in the Suakin operations and in the Nile Expedition. In 1886 he transferred to the Indian Staff Corps, and in 1891 accompanied the expedition against the Hunza and Nagar tribes. He came to prominence following his defence of Chitral for which he was awarded the CB. He was at Atbara and Khartoum in 1898 and served in the South African War from 1899 until 1900, when he was transferred to the British army, joining the Royal Fusiliers. After various commands in India, he became major-general in 1911 and commander of a territorial division in 1912. He returned to India in 1913.
Early in 1915 he was sent to Mesopotamia at the head of a division, and after gaining several victories, had to retreat to Kut, which he defended for five months.. Taken prisoner after the fall of Kut he was removed to Constantinople, and was interned in Prinkipo Island.
He was knighted in 1916 and resigned from the army in 1920, becoming an independent member of parliament for the Wrekin division, joining the Conservative Party in 1922. Research Sir Charles Townshend
Trajan (Marcus Ulpius Trajanus) was a Roman emperor. He was born in 53 at Italica, Spain and died in 117. He was a soldier, and fought many campaigns in Dacia, Armenia, Mesopotamia and Ctesiphon and while in command of the forces on the Rhine was selected as colleague and successor by Emperor Nerva.
On Nerva's death in 98, Trajan became emperor of the Roman Empire. Trajan proved himself one of the greatest of all Roman emperors, equally skilled in military matters as administration and was highly praised by all except members of the Christian sect whom he persecuted. Research Trajan
Thomas Edward Lawrence (T E Lawrence also known as 'Lawrence of Arabia') was a British soldier. He was born in 1888 and died in 1935. Educated at Oxford, he took part in archaeological expeditions to Syria and Mesopotamia between 1910 and 1914. Later he was appointed to the military intelligence department in Cairo and took part in negotiations for an Arab revolt against the Turks. In 1916 he attached himself to the Emir Faisal and led Arab guerrilla raids against the Turks and encouraged an Arab revolution. In 1922 he joined the RAF under an assumed name, and upon discovery of his true identity transferred to the tank corps in 1923 under the name T E Shaw before returning to the RAF in 1925 and in 1927 changed his name legally to T E Shaw. He was killed in a motorbike accident in 1935. Research T E Lawrence
The Probert Encyclopaedia was designed, edited and programed by
Matt and Leela Probert
Abbreviations
Research Agriculture
