hays, cattle, fowl, beasts, bees, silk-worms, and fish, with an account of the several instruments and engines used in the profession; to which is added, Kalendarium Rusticum, or the husbandman's monthly directions; also the prognosticks of dearth, scarcity, plenty, sickness, heat, cold, frost, snow, winds, rain, hail, thunder, &c.; and Dictionarium Rusticum, or the interpretation of rustick terms; the whole work being of great use and advantage to all that delight in that most noble practise." It is dedicated to the gentry and yeomanry of England, and opens with a preface laudatory of agriculture. Notwithstanding, however, the ill aspect of this heavy title-page, the book contains more useful and more enlightened observations on many points of husbandry, than any which had preceded it. He was a warm friend to the enclosure of commozs and other waste land, and he suggested, what in fact he appears (p. 21.) to have carried into effect in 1665, at Wilton, the erection of water-works for the purpose of flooding meadows, an improvement of which I think not nearly so much has been made as is possible in this land of steam and steam-engines. He was evidently well acquainted with the management of watermeads, and his directions with relation to them are practical and sensible. He advises that sandy meadows should be chalked, and ashes applied to sour rushy grasses. When speaking "of several new species of hay or grass," he enumerates clover-grass, trefoyle, St. Foyn, La Lucern, Ray-grass, &c. He also recommends the deep ploughing or digging of land, and on all occasions seemed alive to any improvement in the implements of agriculture. After giving an account, at some length, of the rude and clumsy contrivance of Gabriel Platte, for a dibbling-machine, he elaborately and earnestly advocates the use of a drill, an engraving of one of which, primitive enough it is true in his appearance, he gives in his work. "To remove," he says, "all manner of errors or inconveniences that can be found in setting or howing of corn, I shall here give you a plain and perfect description of an easy and feasible instrument that shall disperse your corn, grain, or pulse, of what kind soever, at what distance, and in what proportion you please." The farmer may be curious to know the construction of this drill of a century and a half since. It had a coulter, a pipe, a hopper, wheels, and axletrees. He was the first English author, I believe, who suggested the use of the manure-drill, for, when speaking of the drill, he says (p. 52.), "By the use of this instrument also, you may cover your grain or pulse with any rich compost you shall prepare for that purpose, either with pigeon's dung, dry or granulated, or ay other saline or lixivial substance made disperseable, which may drop after the corn, and prove an excellent improvemess for we find experimentally, that pigeon's dung, sown by the hand on wheat or barley, mightily advantageth it by the common way of husbandry; much more might we therefore, expect this way, where the dang or such like substance, is all in the se furrow with the corn, where, in the other vulgar way, a great part thereof comes ne near it. It may either be done by having another hopper, on the same frame, behind that for the corn, wherein the compost 17 be put, and made to drop successively after the corn, or it may be sown with another instrument to follow the former, which is the better way, and may both disperse the soil, and cover both soil and seed.” Woolridge was evidently an observer who was able and willing to think for himself. He advocated change of seed from dry, hungry, barren land, to rich and fat land; also from land inclineing to the sout to land inclineing towards the north, and the contrary;" all of which, he well adds (and the reader must remember that Woodridge was writing when chemistry existed only in name), "are manifest signs that there is some particular thing wherein each see! delights, which if we did but understard we might properly apply it, and gain richs and honour to ourselves; but because we are ignorant thereof, and are content sca remain, we must make use of such sis dungs, composts, and other preparations and ways of advancement of the growth of vegetables as are already discovered and made use of." (p. 57.) He extols the use of steeps for seed-car mentions with approbation for this purpos nitre, common salt, as well as urine, and gives a recipe for making a kind of liquid manure with sheep-dung (4 bushel), spetre (pound), and common salt (1 pound boiled together for ten minutes in wa (20 quarts), and this he commends very highly as a steep; and I am inclined to lieve that something of this kind of n liquor, more especially if the seed was afterwards dried by being sprinkled wis some of the very fine manure-powders present proposed, such as the urate of the London Manure Company, the composit of M. Poittevin, the guano, gypsum powder, &c., might be used more profitably by the cultivator than at first sight he may be inclined to believe. He was in favour of paring and burning on some soils, and bad the good sense to discern the advantage WORLIDGE, JOHN. capable of being derived from the permanent improvement of the soil by the use of earthy manures. He devotes, therefore, a chapter to the soils and manures taken from the earth (p. 65); notices the uses, for this purpose, of chalk, lime, marl, clay, Fuller's earth. The value of sand as a fertiliser did not escape our author's attention. He notices the value to some soils of that of the calcareous shores of Cornwall, and of the Suffolk craig formation, and of that which he advises the farmer to lay under his farm-yards and sheep-pens. The excrements of fowls were strongly recommended by Woolridge as a fertilizer. He describes those of pigeons and hens as “incomparable, —one load is worth ten loads of other dung;' commends the use of "all marrow-bones, fish-bones, horn, or horn-shavings;" but he fell into the error | with regard to those which it required a century and a quarter to remove, viz. he fancied that all the enriching qualities of the bones were to be attributed to the grease they contained, instead of to their phosphate of lime. He advocated the mixture of peat, saw-dust, and tanners' refuse bark with dung-heaps, a plan which is even now not nearly so extensively adopted as its merits deserve. Indeed, as honest John Woolridge concludes his section (p. 85), "The well-preparing of dung-mixt is a piece of husbandry not to be slighted, on which point of good or ill husbandry depends the rise and fall of the rents or values of many farms in this kingdom." Every account of live-stock given by the earlier agricultural writers betrays the total want of attention then paid by the farmers to the breeding of stock, or if they do mention the points to be commended in an ox or a sheep, they are precisely those which a modern breeder endeavours to avoid. For instance, the chronicler Hollingshed commends the English cows for their largeness of bone, and even Woolridge, writing centuries after him, although very elaborate on most points of husbandry, treats of the farmer's live-stock in a manner that clearly indicates that in those days, to use a Norfolk phrase, "a cow was a cow, and a sheep a sheep." Thus all the instruction he gives the breeder with regard to the selection of a cow is, that "the best sort is the large Dutch cow that brings two calves at one birth, and gives ordinarily two gallons of milk at one meal." His account of sheep I will also give, without abridgment, for its facts will sound still more novel to a modern farmer :-"There are divers sorts, some bearing much finer wool than others: as the Herefordshire sheep | about Lemster bear the fairest fleeces of any in England. Also they are of several kinds as to their proportion : some are very small, others larger. But the Dutch sheep are the largest of all, being much bigger than any I have seen in England, and yearly bear two or three lambs at a time. It is also reported that they sometimes bear lambs twice in the year." This seemed to convince Woolridge, and very naturally too, of their value, for he adds, "It may doubtless be of very good advantage to obtain of those kinds and also of Spanish sheep that bear such fine fleeces." The scientific modern breeder, when he smiles at this negligence and folly of a bygone race of farmers, must remember, however, the difficulties under which they laboured, not only from lack of knowledge, but also of the means to improve at a reasonable rate their ill-shaped, large-boned, and slow-feeding race of oxen. He should recollect that they had not had the advantage of a Bakewell, a Culley, or a Collings, to labour during a lengthened period for their improvement, the days of the Smithfield Club, and of the Highland Society, were yet far distant. They had not even a suspicion of what improved breeding would effect; and if they were ignorant, as they evidently were, that their breeds were inferior, we can hardly wonder that they were content to labour on, since the very first step to improvement, a belief in greater excellence being possible, was wanting. The opinions, however, of Woolridge with regard to plantations of timber-trees were evidently more enlightened; for although he lived a century before the days of our modern extensive planters-of such men as the Lords Athol, Devonshire, and Fife, and of Sir Henry Steuart-yet he earnestly advised the planting of the poorer soils of our island; he asked the landowners of his time, after describing to them the profit they might derive from such foresighted enterprise, “What can be more pleasant than to have the bounds and limits of your own property preserved, and continued from age to age by the testimony of such growing and living witnesses, in the spring yielding a reviving cordial to your winter-chilled spirit, giving you an assurance of the approaching summer by their pregnant buds and musical inhabitants? In the summer, what more delectable than the curious prospect of the variety of greenness, dark shades, and retirement from the scorching sunbeams?" He well knew, too, what some of my northern friends are only now proving to be practically the case, that "woods also finely refrigerate the air in the summer's parching heats, and qualify the dry and injurious winds, both in winter, spring, and autumn." He devotes a long chapter to the profits and pleasures of fruit-trees, and ridicules very quaintly the objection too commonly made to such plantations, viz. "that their fruit would be stolen." "When," he says, "they become more common, they will be little regarded by these filchers, or if they do borrow a few sometimes in their pockets, or to make a few apple-pies withal, yet that is a poor discouragement to an ingenious spirit, and much like that rustick humour of one that would not improve a very good piece of ground for that purpose with fruit-trees, because the parson would have the decimation of it, and so denied himself the nine parts, because the parson should not have the remainder." Of the ploughs employed 150 years since, he mentions the double-wheeled or Hertfordshire plough, the turnwrest or Kentish plough, "which surpasseth for weight and clumsiness" the one-wheeled plough, the plain plough, and the trenching plough. deservedly) esteemed a science that priacipally teaches us the nature and divers properties and qualities, as well of the several soils, earths, and places, as of the several productions or creatures, whether vegetable, animal, or mineral, that naturally proceed or are artificially produced from, or maintained by, the earth." This be promises the husbandman he will do "after a plain and familiar method." He soon, however, begins to illustrate his "plain and familiar method," by talking of the "secret, mystical, and mechanick indagations of na• ture, the universal spirit, or spirit of mer cury and of salt ;" and gives us but a mean opinion of his natural philosophy, by gravdy telling us that "soon will horse hairs receive life lying in rain-water but a few days in the heat of the sun in spring time." But in spite of these occasional mistakes. the book of Woolridge was perhaps the most practical, and therefore the most useful, book which had yet appeared treating of agriculture and rural affairs. The very publication of such an expensive fol of 326 pages, betrays the increasing thirs Woolridge gives also sundry directions for knowledge of the cultivators of the for angling, fowling, bird-catching, horse- days, and the same remarks apply generaly breeding, and sundry other rural affairs, to those of Platte and of Hartlib; in trua and finally he winds up with a Kalen- both agriculture and agricultural writes darium Rusticum. In these he gives could hardly fail to keep pace with the various monthly directions, of which one rapid increase to the general stock of knowspecimen will suffice, of the mode of farm-ledge which the age in which they flourished ing then commonly adopted. In May he directs the farmer" to kill ivy, to feed down or mow rank corn; to sow barley, buckwheat, pease, hemp, and flax, clover grass, St. Foyn, and other French grasses; to pare and burn land, and wean lambs." He every month, as if in rivalry of the almanack-makers of former generations, treated the farmer to some poetry, often of a most absurd description; thus in the month of March, after having told them that "this month ushers in the most welcome season of the year," and that " gentle Zephyrus fans the sweet buds, and the cælestial drops water fair Flora's garden," he could not help adding same of his own poetry, telling them what must have been indeed novel information, that now "The lofty mountains standing on a row, Which but of late were perriwigg'd with snow, now Woolridge laboured hard, however, in spite of occasional absurdities of expression, to elevate the science of agriculture; and that it was deemed a science in the seventeenth century, is evident in this opening address to the farmer, when he says, Agriculture hath been (not un received to so remarkable an extent; this improvement was not, as my brodes Mr. George Johnson remarks (Hist Gard.), in only one branch of knowled but in the whole circle of the arts and sciences. The reformation was not con fined to religion. By delivering the huma mind from servile thraldom, and teachag man, instead of bowing blindly to custo merely on account of its antiquity, to have a self-dependence, it gave an impulse to improvement which no tyrant opposit of either bigotry, indolence, or self-s ciency could check. Such men as Bac Peiresc, and Evelyn arose, and whilst the first traced the path which men of scie should tread, the two latter lent th talents and their wealth to sustain them the pursuit. Bacon, it has been truly served, was the first who taught men that they were but the servants and interpreters of nature, capable of discovering truth is no other way than by observing and imitating her operations; that facts mast be collected instead of speculations formed and that the materials for the foundati of true systems of knowledge were to be discovered, not in the books of the anciens not in metaphysical theories, not in the fancies of men, but by careful, and laborious WORMS. and patient experiments and observations in the external world. Peiresc was a munificent man of letters; his advice, his purse were open to the votaries of every art and every science; his library was stored with the literature of every age and nation, his garden with the rarest and most useful exotics, and these last he delighted to spread over the country. When, indeed, we cast our eyes over a list of the men of science and literature of all kinds that adorned this age, especially in chemistry and in botany, the two sciences perhaps of all others the most important to agriculture, we need not be surprised to find how rapidly it was rising from being a mere art of empiricism; and when we note how rapidly the thirst for foreign research was prevalent, we can easily perceive how improved modes of culture and new plants were acquired to agriculture. Cavendish, but especially Raleigh, by their visits for lucre as well as fame to the Spanish settlements of America in 1580–8, led the way in a path which Lancaster and Raymond followed in 1791, and laid the foundation of that anomalous copartnership of commercial monarchs, the East India Company. Annual fleets now returned from the east and west laden with the curiosities of both the animal and vegetable kingdoms; of these the potato, tobacco, and tea need alone be instanced; and although the views of men were not yet liberal enough to prompt them to voyages of discovery, with an unmixed desire of extending the field of science, or an enlarged wish to benefit mankind, yet new plants, in common with other hitherto strange natural products, attracted their attention, and, though at first imported as novelties, soon became by degrees to be desired and sought for as the luxuries and necessaries of life. (Quart. Jour. Agr. vol. xii. p. 460.) WORM. See EARTH-WORM, WIREWORM, &C. WORMS, INTESTINAL. A troublesome sort of vermin found in the intestines of horses and other animals. There is, perhaps, nothing so destructive to the health and appearance of the horse as worms. When they have obtained a settlement in the intestines, neither the labour of the groom nor the liberality of the master will prove of any avail towards improving the animal's condition: for as fast as the chyle is formed from the aliment, which ought to be converted into blood, these numerous guests first satiate their craving appetites, and leave but a scanty supply for the exhausted system of the horse, so that a double allowance of corn would not preserve a healthy state; because the digestive organs WORMWOOD. cannot exert an extraordinary power for any length of time, without producing such a state of debility as to render them incapable of performing afterwards their proper office. In these animals, the most common kinds are the following:-1. bots, which many young horses are subject to in the spring; 2. those that resemble earth worms, and which, by physicians, are called lumbrici; 3. those that are about the size of the largest sewing needles, with flat heads called ascarides; 4. that species of worm called tania, or tapeworm. See Bors, FLUKEWORM, &C. WORMWOOD. (Artemisia, so named in honour of Artemisia, wife of King Mausolus, or of Diana Aprec.) There are four perennial rooted bitter aromatic herbs included under this name, and cultivated solely for medicinal purposes:-Common wormwood (Artemisia Absinthium) is a native of almost every part of Europe, and in this country is found by road-sides on heaps of rubbish, &c. It is an erect under shrub, with hoary tri-pinnatisert leaves. The flowers in small, globose, nodding, racemose panicles. The same remarks apply to the drooping sea-wormwood (A. maritima), which is found on salt marshes and the sea coast. Roman wormwood (A. pontica) is a native of Italy; and Santonicum or Tartarian wormwood (A. Sentonica), which is a mere variety of A. maritima of Persia and Siberia. The soil best suited to the growth of these plants is one that is dry, light, and poor, otherwise they become luxuriant, and are defective in their medicinal qualities, as well as in their power to withstand the rigour of the winter. Any situation will suit the common and the sea-wormwoods that is open and unconfined; but the exotic species require to be sheltered from the severe aspects. In a severe winter, the Tartarian can only be preserved under a frame. The sea-wormwood seldom flourishes from the want of a genial soil; the application of salt would undoubtedly be beneficial. They are all propagated by seed, as well as slips and cuttings, the first of which may be sown in March or April, and the latter planted during June, July, and beginning of August. The seed is sown thinly broadcast, and when the plants arrive at a height of two or three inches, are weeded and thinned to six inches asunder; and those taken away pricked out at a similar distance, water being given if the weather is at all dry. The slips and cuttings are planted in a shady border, about eight inches apart, and water given regularly every evening until they have taken root. They are all to be transplanted finally early in the follow ing spring, by whichever mode they are raised, setting the plants at last 18 inches apart. (G. W. Johnson's Kitchen Garden.) See MUGWORT and SOUTHERNWOOD. WOUND. A recent and violent separation of continuity in a soft external part of the body, being attended with an effusion of blood. See ČUT, POULTICE, FOMENTATION, &c. WOUNDWORT. (Stachys, from stachys, a spike, alluding to the mode of flowering.) A genus of rather weedy-looking plants, hardly worth cultivating for ornament. They all succeed in common garden soil. The perennial kinds are easily increased by dividing the roots in spring or autumn. The seeds of the annual kinds should be sown in spring, in the open border. As a vulnerary these plants have no power. There are five indigenous species; the hedge woundwort (S. sylvatica); the ambiguous woundwort (S. ambigua); the marsh woundwort (S. palustris; see ALL HEAL); the downy woundwort (S. germanica); and the corn woundwort (S. arvensis). The marsh woundwort has a fleshy root, creeping extensively; throwing out in autumn a number of tuberous shoots, which render it, in low wet ground, very difficult of extirpation. This, therefore, should be attempted in summer before these knobs are produced, when the flowers are appearing. (Smith's Eng. Flor. vol. iii. p. 98.) WREN. (Troglodytes vulgaris.) A very diminutive well-known bird, inhabiting all parts of Europe, where it maintains itself during the severest winters. The whole length of the bird is rather less than four inches. The plumage is of a deep brown colour. Wrens construct their nests in the corners of out-houses, stacks of wood, or holes in the wall, being nearly of an oval shape, and composed chiefly of moss, lined with feathers. The female usually lays from seven to ten minute white eggs, marked with a few red spots; the eggs measure seven lines and a half in length, by six lines in breadth. The wren produces two broods in the season. These little birds feed on small worms and insects. (Yarrell's Brit. Birds, vol. ii. p. 162.) WRYNECK. (Yunx torquilla.) This common bird is a well-known visiter to this country, arriving in the first or second week of April, and departing by the end of August, or early in September. It frequents small copses, plantations, orchards, and fields enclosed with tall hedges. This bird is called a wryneck from the habit it exhibits of moving its head and neck in various directions, sometimes describing parts of circles, at others from side to side with an undulating motion, not unlike the actions of a snake; and in some of the counties of England this bird is called the snake-bird, from this circumstance. These birds feed on caterpillars and various other insects, and are often seen on the ground near anthills, consuming, as food, large quantities of the ants and their eggs. The wryneck makes little or no nest, but deposits its eggs on the fragments of decayed wood within the hole of a tree. The eggs are from six to ten in number, white, smooth, and shining, nine lines and a half long, by seven lines in breadth. The whole length of the bird is seven inches. The plumage is beautifully marked and shaded with brown and grey. (Yarrell's Brit. Birds, vol. ii. p. 152.) Y. YARD DUNG. See FARM-YARD MANUre. YARD OF LAND. A quantity of land which in some counties signifies fifteen acres, in some twenty, and in others twentyfour, thirty, and thirty-four acres. YARROW. (Achillea.) A genus of showy, free-flowering plants, succeeding well in any common soil, and readily increased by dividing the roots. The species are possessed of aromatic, bitter, ten, and stimulating qualities. The following are indigenous perennials: 1. Sneezewort yarrow, or goose-tongar (A. ptarmica), which grows in wet hedges. or about the banks of rivers, flowering July and August. The root creeps widely, and is difficult of extirpation where the sil is moist. Stems upright, about two fei high; corymbose at the top. Leaves sessie linear, pointed, equally and sharply ser rated, and of a glaucous green. Flowes numerous, small, milk-white in the disk well as in the radius, with an irregular number of ligulate florets. The whole plant has a pungent flavour, provoking a flow of saliva, and this flavour renders it acceptable, as Schreber asserts, to sheep, who delight especially in saltish food. sneezing caused by the dried and powdered leaves is rather owing to their little shap marginal prickles. Its name is derived from this property of causing sneezing. The 2. Serrated yarrow (A. serrata). Th is a much less common species, in which the root is fibrous, leaves linear, lanceolata, downy, deeply serrated. Flowers of a yellowish white or buff colour, not half the size of the foregoing. The whole herb has a powerful aromatic scent and bitter flavour, somewhat like tansy. 3. Common yarrow or milfoil (A. milr folium). This species grows abundantly in our meadows and pastures. The root is |