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
An Atmospheric Railway is a railway so called in consequence of the motive power being derived from the pressure of the atmosphere, or from compressed air. The idea of thus obtaining motion was first suggested by the French engineer Papin, about 1700. In 1810, and again in 1827, a Mr. Medhurst published a scheme for 'propelling carriages through a close-fitting air-tight tunnel by forcing in air behind them' and in 1825 a similar project was patented by a Mr. Yallance of Brighton. About 1835 a Mr. H. Pinkus, an American residing in England, patented a pneumatic railway. The carriages were to travel on an open line of rails, along which a cast-iron tube of between 3 and 4 feet diameter was to be laid, having a longitudinal slit from 1 to 2 inches wide and closed by a flexible valve along its upper side, through which a connection could be formed between the leading carriage and a piston working within the tube. This method was improved by Messrs. Clegg and Samuda, who in 1840 tried some experiments on a portion of the West London Railway with sufficient success to induce the government to advance a loan to the Dublin and KingstownRailway Company, for the construction of a pneumatic line from Kingstown to Dalkey. It was opened for passenger traffic at the end of 1843, and was worked for many months. The London and Croydon Company subsequently obtained powers for laying down an atmospheric railway by the side of their other line from London to Croydon, and in experimental trips in 1845 a speed of 30 miles an hour was obtained with sixteen carriages, and of 70 miles an hour with six carriages. But during the intense heat of the summer of 1846 the iron tube frequently became so hot as to melt the composition which sealed the valve, and the line had to be worked by locomotives. The mechanical difficulty of commanding a sufficient amount of rarefaction led to the abandonment of the system for railway purposes. It was revived, however, for the conveyance of letters and
arcels in towns by means of tubes of moderate diameter laid beneath the streets, but not proceeded with. Within offices, however, atmospheric railways or rather pneumatic despatch systems are used notably within the supermarket chain Sainsburys where cash from tills is put into a cylindrical container which is closed and inserted into a pressurised pipe system for conveyance to the cash office. Research Atmospheric Railway
A cause is that which produces an effect; that from which anything proceeds and without which it would not exist. In the system of Aristotle the word rendered by cause and its equivalents in modern language has a more extensive signification. He divides causes into four kinds: efficient, formal, material, and final. The efficient or first cause is the force or agency by which a result is produced; the formal, the means or instrument by which it is produced; the material, the substance from which it is produced; the final, the purpose or end for which it is produced. In a general sense the term is used for the reason or motive that urges, moves, or impels the mind to act or decide.
Determinism is a philosophical theory which holds that the will is not free, but is invincibly determined either - according to the older form of the theory - by a motive furnished by Providence, or - according to the modern form - by the aggregation of inherited qualities and tendencies. Research Determinism
Jean Buridan was a French scholastic philosopher of the 14th century. He was a disciple of Occam at Paris, and has attained a kind of fame from an illustration he is said to have used in favour of his theory of determinism (that is, the doctrine that every act of volition is determined by some motive external to the will itself), and which still goes under the name of 'Buridan's ass.' He is said to have supposed the case of a hungry ass placed at an equal distance from two equally attractive bundles of hay, and to have asserted that in the supposed case the ass must inevitably have perished from hunger, there being nothing to determine him to prefer the one bundle to the other. The nature of the illustration, however, makes it more likely that if was invented by Buridan's opponents to ridicule his views than by himself. Jean Buridan died after 1358 at the age of sixty. Research Jean Buridan
An air-engine is an engine in which air heated, and so expanded, or compressed air is used as the motive power. A great many engines of the former kind have been invented, some of which have been found to work pretty well where no great power is required. They may be said to be essentially similar in construction to the steam-engine, though of course the expansibility of air by heat is small compared with the expansion that takes place when water is converted into steam. Engines working by compressed air have been found very useful in mining, tunnelling, etc, and the compressed air may be conveyed to its destination by means of pipes. In such cases the waste air serves for ventilation and for reducing the oppressive heat. Research Air-engine
Henry is the unit of inductance. An inductor has an inductance of one henry if an electro-motive force of one volt is induced when the current changes at the rate of one ampere per second.
Hydraulics is that part of mechanical science which has to do with conducting, raising, and confining water, or of applying it as a motive power. It thus has to do with the flow of water in pipes or channels, and with the various machines in which water is utilized, such as water-wheels, pumps, turbines, the archimedean screw, the Barker's mill, the hydraulic ram, the hydraulic crane, the hydraulic or hydrostatic press, etc. Research Hydraulics
In electronics, inductance is the property of a circuit whereby an electro-motive force is generated by reason of a change in the magnetic flux through the circuit. Research Inductance
A steam engine is an apparatus for converting heat energy into useful work by means of th expansive force of steam.
The earliest recorded attempt to construct a working steam engine was conducted by Hero of Alexandria about 130BC, whose engine was later adapted for use with water instead of steam and became known as the Barker's Mill. Giobvanni della Porta at the beginning of the 17th century adapted another of Hero's inventions, his famous fountain replacing the expanded air used in the original with steam. In 1655 the marquess of Worcester is credited with the invention of a steam engine for pumping water.
The first practical step towards the application of steam power as a motive force was taken by Thomas Savery who patented and exhibited a model of his steam engine at the Royal Institution in London in 1698. Thomas Savery's engine essentially consisted of a cylinder into which steam entered and forced out a charge of water, sucked into it by a previous charge of steam that was suddenly condensed by a jet of cold water allowed to flow over the outer surface of the cylinder. Thomas Savery's steam engines were erected in many parts of Great Britain to pump water. However, Dionysius Papin had published a design for a high-pressure steam engine in 1690, and it is probable that Savery took the plan from him.
Whether designed by Thomas Savery or Dionysius Papin, the early steam engine described was considerably improved by Thomas Newcomen and John Cawley who introduced a piston, driven down by atmospheric pressure as a vacuum was created in the cylinder by the condensation of the steam. This improved steam engine was also used for pumping water.
In 1769 James Watt patented a double-condenser which was another major improvement upon the efficiency of the steam engine, and in 1804 Richard Trevithick applied the steam engine to run along rails. Research Steam Engine
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Abbreviations
Research Agriculture
