Agricultural State

Third of the stages through which most advanced branches of mankind have pa ed. It has followed the hunting and the pastoral state. an ever increasing population, and large areas depleted of their fertility, it becomes nece ary to study the laws of nature in their application to plant and animal life, that the science begins to develop and the art to demand more and more skill in manifold directions. It is almost entirely within the present century that the practice of A. may be said to have been established upon a scientific basis. For though Sir Anthony Fitzherbert wrote The Booke of Husbandrie in 1523, and Thomas Tu er gave us his 500 Points of Good Husbandrie in 1573, it was not till Liebig's Chemistry in its Relations to Agriculture and Physiology , 1840, that any rational scientific principles were established as a foundation for agricultural practice. Since then progre has been rapid in all branches of A. and its allied industries.