Chapter 31

a history of St Gregory and his companions, the doctrine of Gregory, and the conversion of Armenia to Christianity.

See V. Langlois, Collection des historiens anciens et modernes de l'Armenie (Paris, 1868).

AGATHARCHIDES, or AGATHARCHUS, of Cnidus, Greek historian and geographer, lived in the time of Ptolemy Philometor (181-146 B.C.) and his successors. Amongst other works, he wrote treatises on Asia, Europe and The Red Sea. Interesting extracts from the last, of some length, are preserved in Photius (cod. 213), who praises the style of the author, which was modelled on that of Thucydides.

See H. Leopoldi, De Agatharchide Cnidio Dissertatio (1892); C. W. Muller, Fragmenta Historicorum Graecorum, iii., and Geographi Graeci Minores, i.; E. H. Bunbury, Hist. of Ancient Geography, ii. (1879).

AGATHARCHUS, an Athenian painter of the 5th century B.C. He is said by Vitruvius to have been the first to paint a scene for the acting of tragedies. Hence some writers, such as Karl Woermann, have supposed that he introduced perspective and illusion into painting. This is a mistaken view, for ancient writers know nothing of canvas scenes; the background painted by Agatharchus was the wooden front of the stage building, and it was painted, not with reference to any particular play, but as a permanent decorative background, representing no doubt a palace or temple. Agatharchus is said to have been seized by Alcibiades and compelled by him to paint the interior of his house, which shows that at the time (about 435 B.C.) decorative painting of rooms was the fashion.

AGATHIAS (c. A.D. 536-582), of Myrina in Aeolis, Greek poet and historian. He studied law at Alexandria, completed his training at Constantinople and practised as an advocate (scholasticus) in the courts. Literature, however, was his favourite pursuit. He wrote a number of short love-poems in epic metre, called Daphniaca. He next put together a kind of anthology, containing epigrams by earlier and contemporary poets and himself, under the title of a Cycle of new Epigrams. About a hundred epigrams by Agathias have been preserved in the Greek Anthology and show considerable taste and elegance. After the death of Justinian (565), some of Agathias's friends persuaded him to write the history of his own times. This work, in five books, begins where Procopius ends, and is the chief authority for the period 552-558. It deals chiefly with the struggles of the Byzantine army, under the command of the eunuch Narses, against the Goths, Vandals, Franks and Persians. The author prides himself on his honesty and impartiality, but he is lacking in judgment and knowledge of facts; the work, however, is valuable from the importance of the events of which it treats. Gibbon contrasts Agathias as ``a poet and rhetorician'' with Procopius ``a statesman and soldier.''

AUTHORITIES.--Editio princeps, by B. Vulcanius (1594); in the Bonn Corpus Scriptorum Byz. Hist., by B. G. Niebuhr (1828); in Migne, Patrologia Graeca, lxxxviii.; L. Dindorf, Historici Graeci Minores (1871); W. S. Teuffel, ``Agathias von Myrine,'' in Philolegus (i. 1846); C. Krumbacher, Geschichte der byzantinischen Litteratur (2nd ed. 1897).

AGATHO, pope from 678 to 681, was born in Sicily. He is noteworthy as the pope who ordered St Wilfrid to be restored to his bishopric at York in 679, and as the first to cease payment of the tribute hitherto paid on election to the emperor at Constantinople. It was during his pontificate that the 6th oecumenical council was held at Constantinople, to which he sent his legates and those from a Roman council held in 679. Agatho died on the 10th of January 681.

AGATHOCLES (361-289 B.C.), tyrant of Syracuse, was born at Thermae Himeraeae (mod. Termini Imerese) in Sicily. The son of a potter who had removed to Syracuse, he learned his father's trade, but afterwards entered the army. In 333 he married the widow of his patron Damas, a distinguished and wealthy citizen. He was twice banished for attempting to overthrow the oligarchical party in Syracuse (q.v.); in 317 he returned with an army of mercenaries under a solemn oath to observe the democratic constitution which was then set up. Having banished or murdered some 10,000 citizens, and thus made himself master of Syracuse, he created a strong army and fleet and subdued the greater part of Sicily. War with Carthage followed. In 310 Agathocles, defeated and besieged in Syracuse, took the desperate resolve of breaking through the blockade and attacking the enemy in Africa. After several victories he was at last completely defeated (306) and fled secretly to Sicily. After concluding peace with Carthage, Agathocles styled himself king of Sicily, and established his rule over the Greek cities of the island more firmly than ever. Even in his old age he displayed the same restless energy, and is said to have been meditating a fresh attack on Carthage at the time of his death. His last years were harassed by ill-health and the turbulence of his grandson Archagathus, at whose instigation he is said to have been poisoned; according to others, he died a natural death. He was a born leader of mercenaries, and, although he did not shrink from cruelty to gain his ends, he afterwards showed himself a mild and popular ``tyrant.''

See Justin xxii., xxiii.; Diodorus Siculus xix., xxi., xxii. (follows generally Timaeus who had a special grudge against Agathocles); Polybius ix. 23; Schubert, Geschichte des Agathokles (1887); Grote, History of Greece, ch. 97; also SICILY, History. AGATHODAEMON; in Greek mythology, the ``good spirit'' of cornfields and vineyards. It was the custom of the Greeks to drink a cup of pure wine in his honour at the end of each meal (Aristophanes, Equites, 106). He was also regarded as the protecting spirit of the state and of individuals. He was often accompanied by 'Agathe Tuche (good fortune), and in this aspect may be compared with the Roman Bonus Eventus (Pliny, Nat Hist. xxxvi. 23), and Genius. He is represented in works of art in the form of a serpent, or of a young man with a cornucopia and a bowl in one hand, and a poppy and ears of corn in the other.

See Gerhard, Uber Agathodamon und Bona Dea (Berlin, 1849).

AGATHODAEMON, of Alexandria, map designer, probably lived in the 2nd century A.D. Some MSS. of the Geography of Ptolemy contain twenty-seven maps, which are stated to have been drawn by Agathodaemon of Alexandria, who ``delineated the whole world according to the eight books of Ptolemy's geography.'' As Ptolemy speaks of IIinakes to accompany his treatise, these maps were probably the work of a contemporary acting under his instructions. About 1470 Nicolaus Doris, a Benedictine monk, brought out a revised edition of them, the names being inserted in Latin instead of Greek.

See Bunbury, History of Ancient Geography, ii.

AGATHON (c. 448-400 B.C.), Athenian tragic poet, friend of Euripides and Plato, best known from his mention by Aristophanes (Thesmophoriazusae) and in Plato's Symposium, which describes the banquet given to celebrate his obtaining a prize for a tragedy (416). He probably died at the court of Archelaus, king of Macedonia. He introduced certain innovations, and Aristotle (Poetica, 9) tells us that the plot of his 0Antho1 was original, not, as usually, borrowed from mythological subjects.

See Aristophanes, Thesmoph. 59, 106, Eccles. 100; Plato, Symp. 198 c; Plutarch, Symp. 3; Aelian, Var. Hist. xiv. 13; Ritsch, Opuscula, i.; fragments in Nauck, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta.

AGATHYRSI, a people of Thracian origin, who in the earliest historical times occupied the plain of the Maris (Maros), in the region now known as Transylvania. Thyrsi is supposed to be a Scythian form of Trausoi (Trausi), a Thracian tribe mentioned by Stephanus of Byzantium. They are described by Herodotus (iv. 104) as of luxurious habits, wearing gold ornaments (the district is still auriferous) and having wives in common. They tattooed their bodies (picti, Aeneid iv. 136), degrees of rank being indicated by the manner in which this was done, and coloured their hair dark blue. Like the Gallic Druids, they recited their laws in a kind of sing-song to prevent their being forgotten, a practice still in existence in the days of Aristotle (Problemata, xix. 28). Valerius Flaccus (Argonautica, vi. 135) calls them Thyrsagetae, probably in reference to their celebration of orgiastic rites in honour of some divinity akin to the Thracian Dionysus. In later times the Agathyrsi were driven farther north, and their name was unknown to the Romans in their original home.

[26]. 88; Pomponius Mela ii. 1. 10: W. Tomaschek, ``Die alten Thraker,'' in Sitzungsber. der philosophisch-historischen Klasse der kaiserl. Akad. der Wiss. cxxviii. (Vienna, 1893).

AGAVE, a large botanical genus of the natural order Amaryllidaceae, chiefly Mexican, but occurring also in the southern and western United States and in central and tropical South America. The plants have a large rosette of thick fleshy leaves generally ending in a sharp point and with a spiny margin; the stout stem is usually short, the leaves apparently springing from the root. They grow slowly and flower but once after a number of years, when a tall stem or ``mast'' grows from the centre of the leaf rosette and bears a large number of shortly tubular flowers. After development of fruit the plant dies down, but suckers are frequently produced from the base of the stem which become new plants. The most familiar species is Agave americana (see fig.), a native of tropical America, the so-called century plant or American aloe (the maguey of Mexico). The number of years before flowering occurs depends on the vigour of the individual, the richness of the soil and the climate; during these years the plant is storing in its fleshy leaves the nourishment required for the effort of flowering. During the development of the inflorescence there is a rush of sap to the base of the young flowerstalk. In the case of A. americana and other species this is used by the Mexicans to make their national beverage, pulque; the flower shoot is cut out and the sap collected and subsequently fermented. By distillation a spirit called mescal is prepared. The leaves of several species yield fibre, as for instance, A. rigida var. sisalana, sisal hemp (q.v.), A. decipiens, false sisal hemp; A. americana is the source of pita fibre, and is used as a fibre plant in Mexico, the West Indies and southern Europe. The flowering stem of the last named, dried and cut in slices, forms

Agave americana, Century plant or American aloe. About 1/40 nat. size. 1, Flower; 2, same flower split open above the ovary; 3, ovary cut across; 1, 2, and 3, about 1/2 nat. size.

From the Botanical Magazine, by permission of Lovell Reeve and Co.

natural razor strops, and the expressed juice of the leaves will lather in water like soap. In the Madras Presidency the plant is extensively used for hedges along railroads. Agave americana, century plant, was introduced into Europe about the middle of the 16th century and is now widely cultivated for its handsome appearance; in the variegated forms the leaf has a white or yellow marginal or central stripe from base to apex. As the leaves unfold from the centre of the rosette the impression of the marginal spines is very conspicuous on the still erect younger leaves. The plants are usually grown in tubs and put out in the summer months, but in the winter require to be protected from frost. They mature very slowly and die after flowering, but are easily propagated by the offsets from the base of the stem.

AGDE, a town of southern France, in the department of Herault, on the left bank of the river of that name, 2 1/2 m. from the Mediterranean Sea and 32 m. S.W. of Montpellier on the Southern railway. Pop. (1906) 7146. The town lies at the foot of an extinct volcano, the Montagne St Loup, and is built of black volcanic basalt, which gives it a gloomy appearance. Overlooking the river is the church of St Andre, which dates partly from the 12th century, and, till the Revolution, was a cathedral. It is a plain and massive structure with crenelated walls, and has the aspect of a fortress rather than of a church. The exterior is diversified by arched recesses forming machicolations, and the same architectural feature is reproduced in the square tower which rises like a donjon above the building. The Canal du Midi, or Languedoc canal, uniting the Garonne with the Mediterranean, passes under the walls of the town, and the mouth of the Herault forms a harbour which is protected by a fort. The maritime commerce of the town has declined, owing partly to the neighbourhood of Cette, partly to the shallowness of the Herault. The fishing industry is, however, still active. The chief public institutions are the tribunal of commerce and the communal college.

Agde is a place of great antiquity and is said to have been founded under the name of agathe polis (Good City) by the Phocaeans. The bishopric was established about the year 400 and was suppressed in 1790.

SYNOD OF AGDE (Concilium Agathense.)--With the permission of the West Goth Alaric II. thirty-five bishops of southern Gaul assembled in person or sent deputies to Agde on the 11th of September 506. Caesarius, bishop of Arles, presided. The forty seven genuine canons of the synod deal with discipline, church life, the alienation of ecclesiastical property and the treatment of Jews. While favouring sacerdotal celibacy the council laid rather rigid restrictions on monasticism. It commanded that the laity communicate at Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide. The canons of Agde are based in part on earlier Gallic, African and Spanish legislation; and some of them were re-enacted by later councils, and found their way into collections such as the Hispana, Pseudo-Isidore and Gratian.

See Mansi viii. 319 ff.; Hefele, Conciliengeschichte, 2nd edition, ii. 649 ff. (English translation, iv. 76 ff.); Herzog-Hauck, Realencyklopadie, i. 242.

AGE (Fr. age, through late Lat. aetaticum, from aetas), a term used (1) of the divisions into which it is suggested that human history may be divided, whether regarded from the geological, cultural or moral aspects, e.g. the palaeolithic age, the bronze age, the dark ages; (2) of an historic epoch or generation; (3) of any period or stage in the physical life of a person, animal or thing; (4) of that time of life at which the law attributes full responsibility for his or her acts to the individual.

(1) From the earliest times there would appear to have been the belief that the history of the earth and of mankind falls naturally into periods or ages. Classical mythology popularized the idea. Hesiod, for example, in his poem Works and Days, describes minutely five successive ages, during each of which the earth was peopled by an entirely distinct race. The first or golden race lived in perfect happiness on the fruits of the untilled earth, suffered from no bodily infirmity, passed away in a gentle sleep, and became after death guardian daemons of this world. The second or silver race was degenerate, and refusing to worship the immortal gods, was buried by Jove in the earth. The third or brazen race, still more degraded, was warlike and cruel, and perished at last by internal violence. The fourth or heroic race was a marked advance upon the preceding, its members being the heroes or demi-gods who fought at Troy and Thebes, and who were rewarded after death by being permitted to reap thrice a year the free produce of the earth. The fifth or iron race, to which the poet supposes himself to belong, is the most degenerate of all, sunk so low in every vice that any new change must be for the better. Ovid, in his Metamorphoses, follows Hesiod exactly as to nomenclature and very closely as to substance. He makes the degeneracy continuous, however, by omitting the heroic race or age, which, as Grote points out, was probably introduced by Hesiod, not as part of his didactic plan, but from a desire to conciliate popular feeling by including in his poem the chief myths that were already current among the Greeks. Varro recognized three ages: (1) from the beginning of mankind to the Deluge, a quite indefinite period; (2) from the Deluge to the First Olympiad, called the Mythical Period; (3) from the First Olympiad to his own time, called the Historic Period. Lucretius divided man's history into three cultural periods: (1) the Age of Stone; (2) the Age of Bronze; (3) the Age of Iron. He thus anticipated the conclusions of some of the greatest of modern archaeologists.

(2) A definite period in history, distinguished by some special characteristic, such as great literary activity, is generally styled, with some appropriate epithet, an age. It is usual, for example, to speak of the Age of Pericles, the Augustan, the Elizabethan or the Victorian Ages; of the Age of the Crusades, the Dark Ages, the Middle Ages, the Age of Steam. Such isolated periods, with no continuity or necessary connexion of any kind, are obviously quite distinct from the ages or organically related periods into which philosophers have divided the whole course of human history. Auguste Comte, for instance, distinguishes three ages according to the state of knowledge in each, and he supposes that we are now entering upon the third of these. In the first age of his scheme knowledge is supernatural or fictitious; in the second it is metaphysical or abstract; in the third it is positive or scientific. Schemes somewhat similar have been proposed by other philosophers, chiefly of France and Germany, and seem to be regarded by them as essential to any complete science of history.

(3) The subject of the duration of human and animal life does not fall within the scope of this article, and the reader is referred to LONGEVITY. But the word ``age'' has been used by physiologists to express certain natural divisions in human development and decay. These are usually regarded as numbering five, viz. infancy, lasting to the seventh year; childhood to the fourteenth; youth to the twenty-first; adult life till fifty; and old age.

(4) The division of human life into periods for legal purposes is naturally more sharp and definite than in physiology. It would be unscientific in the physiologist to name any precise year for the transition from one of his stages to another, inasmuch as that differs very considerably among different nations, and even to some extent among different individuals of the same nation. But the law must necessarily be fixed and uniform, and even where it professes to proceed according to nature, must be more precise than nature. The Roman law divided human life for its purposes into four chief periods, which had their subdivisions--(1) infantia, lasting till the close of the seventh year; (2) the period between infantia and pubertas, males becoming puberes at fourteen and females at twelve; (3) adolescentia, the period between puberty and majority; and (4) the period after the twenty-fifth year, when males became majores. The first period was one of total legal incapacity; in the second period a person could lawfully do certain specified acts, but only with the sanction of his tutor or guardian; in the third the restrictions were fewer, males being permitted to manage their own property, contract marriage and make a will; but majority was not reached until the age of twenty-five. By English law there are two great periods into which life is divided--infancy, which lasts in both sexes until the twenty-first year, and manhood or womanhood. The period of infancy, again, is divided into several stages, marked by the growing development both of rights and obligations. Thus at twelve years of age a male may take the oath of allegiance; at fourteen both sexes are held to have arrived at years of discretion, and may therefore choose guardians, give evidence and consent or disagree to a marriage. A female has the last privilege from the twelfth year, but the marriage cannot be celebrated until the majority of the parties without the consent of parents or guardians. At fourteen, too, both sexes are fully responsible to the criminal law. Between seven and fourteen there is responsibility only if the accused be proved doli capax, capable of discerning between right and wrong, the principle in that case being that malitia supplet aetatem. At twenty-one both males and females obtain their full legal rights, and become liable to all legal obligations. A seat in the British parliament may be taken at twenty-one. Certain professions, however, demand as a qualification in entrants a more advanced age than that of legal man. hood. In the Church of England a candidate for deacon's orders must be twenty-three (in the Roman Catholic Church, twenty-two) and for priest's orders twenty-four years of age; and no clergyman is eligible for a bishopric under thirty. In Scotland infancy is not a legal term. The time previous to majority, which, as in England, is reached by both sexes at twenty-one, is divided into two stages: pupilage lasts until the attainment of puberty, which the law fixes at fourteen in males and twelve in females; minority lasts from these ages respectively until twenty-one. Minority obviously corresponds in some degree to the English years of discretion, but a Scottish minor has more personal rights than an English infant in the last stage of his infancy, e.g he may dispose by will of movable property, make contracts, carry on trade, and, as a necessary consequence, is liable to be declared a bankrupt. In France the year of majority is twenty-one, and the nubile age eighteen for males and fifteen for females, with a restriction as to the consent of guardians. Age qualification for the chamber of deputies is twenty-five and for the senate forty years. In Germany, majority is reached at twenty-one, the nubile age is twenty for males and sixteen for females, subject to the consent of parents. Without the consent of parents, the age is twenty-five for males and twenty-four for females. The age qualification for the Reichstag is twenty-five. In Austria the age of majority is twenty-four, and the nubile age fourteen for either sex, subject to the consent of the parents. In Denmark, qualified majority is reached at eighteen and full majority at twenty-five. The nubile age is twenty for males and sixteen for females. In Spain, majority is reached at twenty-three; the nubile age is eighteen for males and sixteen for females. In Greece the age of majority is twenty-one, and the nubile age sixteen for males and fourteen for females. In Holland the age of majority is twenty-one, and the nubile age eighteen for males and sixteen for females. In Italy, majority is reached at twenty-one; the nubile age is eighteen for males and fifteen for females. In Switzerland the age of majority is twenty, and the nubile age is eighteen for males and sixteen for females. In the United States the age qualification for a president is thirty-five, for a senator thirty and for a representative twenty-five.

AGELADAS, or (as the name is spelt in an inscription) HAGELAIDAS, a great Argive sculptor, who flourished in the latter part of the 6th and the early part of the 5th century B.C. He was specially noted for his statues of Olympic victors (of 520, 516, 508 B.C.); also for a statue at Messene of Zeus, copied on the coins of that city. Ageladas was said to have been the teacher of Myron, Phidias and Polyclitus; this tradition is a testimony to his wide fame, though historically doubtful. We have no work of Ageladas surviving; but we have an inscription which contains the name of his son Argeiadas.

AGEN, a city of south-western France, capital of the department of Lot-et-Garonne, 84 m. S.E. of Bordeaux by the Southern railway between Bordeaux and Toulouse. Pop. (1906) 18,640. It is skirted on the west by the Garonne itself, and on the north by its lateral canal. The river is crossed by a stone bridge, by a suspension bridge for foot-passengers, and by a fine canal bridge, carrying the lateral canal. Pleasant promenades stretch for some distance along the right bank. The town is a medley of old narrow streets contrasting with the wide modern boulevards which cross it at intervals. The chief building in Agen is the cathedral of St Caprais, the most interesting portion of which is the apse of the 12th century with its three apse-chapels; the transept dates from the 12th and 13th centuries, the nave from the 14th to the 16th centuries; the tower flanking the south facade is modern. The interior is decorated with modern paintings and frescoes. There are several other churches, among them the church of the Jacobins, a brick building of the 13th century, and the church of St Hilaire of the 16th century, which has a modern tower. In the prefecture, a building of the 18th century, once the bishop's palace, is a collection of historical portraits. The hotel de ville occupies the former Hotel du Presidial, an obsolete tribunal, and contains the municipal library. Two houses of the 16th century, the Hotel d'Estrades and the Hotel de Vaurs, are used as the museum, which has a rich collection of fossils, prehistoric and Roman remains, and other antiquities and curiosities. The poet Jacques Jasmin was a native of the town, which has erected a statue to him. Through its excellent water communication it affords an outlet for the agricultural produce of the district, and forms an entrepot of trade between Bordeaux and Toulouse. Agen is the seat of a bishop. It is the seat of a court of appeal and a court of assizes, and has tribunals of first instance and of commerce and a chamber of commerce. There are also ecclesiastical seminaries, lycees for boys and girls, training-colleges, a school of commerce and industry, and a branch of the Bank of France. Agen is the market for a rich agricultural region. The chief articles of commerce are fattened poultry, prunes (pruneaux d'Agen) and other fruit, cork, wine, vegetables and cattle. Manufactures include flour, dried plums, pate de foie gras and other delicacies, hardware, manures, brooms, drugs, woven goods tiles.

Agen (Aginnum) was the capital Of the Celtic tribe of the Nitiobroges, and the discovery of extensive ruins attests its importance under the Romans. In later times it was the capital of the Agenais. Its bishopric was founded in the 4th century. Agen changed hands more than once in the course of the Albigensian wars, and at their close a tribunal of inquisition was established in the town and inflicted cruel persecution on the heretics. During the religious wars of the 16th century Agen took the part of the Catholics and openly joined the League in 1589.

See Labenazie, Histoire de la ville d'Agen et pays d'Agenois, ed. by A.-G. de Dampierre (1888); A. Ducom, La Commune d'Agen: essai sur son histoire et son organisation depuis son origine jusqu'au traite de Bretigny (1892).

AGENAIS, or AGENOIS, a former province of France. In ancient Gaul it was the country of the Nitiobroges with Aginnum for its capital, and in the 4th century it was the Civitas Agennensium which was a part of Aquitania Secunda and which formed the diocese of Agen. Having in general shared the fortunes of Aquitaine during the Merovingian and Carolingian periods, Agenais next became an hereditary countship in the part of the country now called Gascony (Vasconia.) In 1038 this countship was purchased by the dukes of Aquitaine and counts of Poitiers. The marriage of Eleanor of Aquitaine with Henry Plantagenet in 1152 brought it under the sway of England; but when Richard Coeur-de-Lion married his sister Joan to Raymund VI., count of Toulouse, in 1196, Agenais formed part of the princess's dowry; and with the other estates of the last independent count of Toulouse it lapsed to the crown of France in 1271. This, however, was not for long; the king of France had to recognize the prior rights of the king of England to the possession of the countship, and restored it to him in 1279. During the wars between the English and the French in the 14th and 15th centuries, Agenais was frequently taken and retaken, the final retreat of the English in 1453 at last leaving the king of France in peaceable possession. Thenceforth Agenais was no more than an administrative term. At the end of the ancien regime it formed part of the ``Gouvernement'' of Guienne, and at the Revolution it was incorporated in the department of Lot-et-Garonne, of which it constitutes nearly the whole. The title of count of Agenais, which the kings of England had allowed to fall into desuetude, was revived by the kings of France, and in 1789 was held by the family of the dukes of Richelieu.

There is no good history of Agenais; that published by Jules Andrieu in 1893 (Histoire de l'Agenais, 2 vols.) being quite inadequate. The Bibliographie generale de l'Agenais, by the same author (1886-1891, 3 vols.), may be found useful. (C. B.n)

AGENT (from Lat. agere, to act), a name applied generally to, any person who acts for another. It has probably been adopted from France, as its function in modern civil law was otherwise expressed in Roman jurisprudence. Ducange (s.v. Agentes) tells us that in the later Roman empire the officers who collected the grain in the provinces for the troops and the household, and afterwards extended their functions so as to include those of government postmasters or spies, came to be called agentes in rebus, their earlier name having been frumentarii. In law an agent is a person authorized, expressedly or impliedly, to act for another, who is thence called the principal, and who is, in consequence of, and to the extent of, the authority delegated by him, bound by the acts of his agent. (See PRINCIPAL AND AGENT; FACTOR, &c.)

In Scotland the procurators or solicitors who act in the preparation of cases in the various law-courts are called agents. (See SOLICITOR.)

In France the agents de change were formerly the class generally licensed for conducting all negotiations, as they were termed, whether in commerce or the money market. The term has, however, become practically limited to those who conduct transactions in public stock. The laws and regulations as to courtiers, or those whose functions were more distinctly confined to transactions in merchandise, have been mixed up with those applicable to agents de change. Down to the year 1572 both functions were free; but at that period, partly for financial reasons, a system of licensing was adopted at the suggestion of the chancellor, l'Hopital. Among the other revolutionary measures of the year 1791, the professions of agent and courtier were again opened to the public. Many of the financial convulsions of the ensuing years, which were due to more serious causes, were attributed to this indiscriminate removal of restrictions, and they were reimposed in 1801. From that period regulations have been made from time to time as to the qualifications of agents, the security to be found by them and the like. They are now regarded as public officers, appointed, with certain privileges and duties, by the government to act as intermediaries in negotiating transfers of public funds and commercial stocks and for dealing in metallic currency. (See STOCK EXCHANGE: France.)

In diplomacy the term ``agent'' was originally applied to all ``diplomatic agents,'' including ambassadors. With the evolution of the diplomatic hierarchy, however, the term gradually sank until it was technically applied only to the lowest class of ``diplomatic agents,'' without a representative character and of a status and character so dubious that, by the regulation of the congress of Vienna, they were wholly excluded from the immunities of the diplomatic service. (See DIPLOMACY.)

AGENT-GENERAL, the term given to a representative in England of one of the self-governing British colonies. Agents-general may be said to hold a position mid-way between agents of provinces and ambassadors of foreign countries. They are appointed, and their expenses and salaries provided, by the governments of the colonies they represent, viz. Cape of Good Hope, Natal, the Transvaal, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Victoria, Western Australia, New Zealand and Canada (whose representatives are termed high commissioners). Their duties are to look after the political and economic interests of their colonies in London, to assist in all financial and commercial matters in which their colonies may be concerned, such as shipping arrangements and rates of freight, cable communications and rates, tenders for public works, &c., and to make known the products of their colonies. Those colonies which are not under responsible government are represented in London by crown agents.

AGESANDER, a Rhodian sculptor, whose title to fame is that he is mentioned by Pliny (Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 37) as author (with Polydorus and Athenodorus) of the group of the Laocoon. Inscriptions recently found at Lindus in Rhodes date Agesander and Athenodorus to the period 42-21 B.C. The date of the Laocoon seems thus finally settled, after long controversy. It represents the culmination of a sentimental or pathetic tendency in art, which is prominent in the somewhat earlier sculpture of Pergamum. (See GREEK ART.)

AGESILAUS II., king of Sparta, of the Eurypontid family, was the son of Archidamus II. and Eupolia, and younger step-brother of Agis II., whom he succeeded about 401 B.C. Agis had, indeed, a son Leotychides, but he was set aside as illegitimate, current rumour representing him as the son of Alcibiades. Agesilaus' success was largely due to Lysander, who hoped to find in him a willing tool for the furtherance of his political designs; in this hope, however, Lysander war disappointed, and the increasing power of Agesilaus soon led to his downfall. In 396 Agesilaus was sent to Asia with a force of 2000 Neodamodes (enfranchized Helots) and 6000 allies to secure the Greek cities against a Persian attack. On the eve of sailing from Aulis he attempted to offer a sacrifice, as Agamemnon had done before the Trojan expedition, but the Thebans intervened to prevent it, an insult for which he never forgave them. On his arrival at Ephesus a three months' truce was concluded with Tissaphernes, the satrap of Lydia and Caria, but negotiations conducted during that time proved fruitless, and on its termination Agesilaus raided Phrygia, where he easily won immense booty since Tissaphernes had concentrated his troops in Carla. After spending the winter in organizing a cavalry force, he made a successful incursion into Lydia in the spring of 395. Tithraustes was thereupon sent to replace Tissaphernes, who paid with his life for his continued failure. An armistice was concluded between Tithraustes and Agesilaus, who left the southern satrapy and again invaded Phrygia, which he ravaged until the following spring. He then came to an agreement with the satrap Pharnabazus and once more turned southward. It was said that he was planning a campaign in the interior, or even an attack on Artaxerxes himself, when he was recalled to Greece owing to the war between Sparta and the combined forces of Athens, Thebes, Corinth, Argos and several minor states. A rapid march through Thrace and Macedonia brought him to Thessaly, where he repulsed the Thessalian cavalry who tried to impede him. Reinforced by Phocian and Orchomenian troops and a Spartan army, he met the confederate forces at Coronea in Boeotia, and in a hotly contested battle was technically victorious, but the success was a barren one and he had to retire by way of Delphi to the Peloponnese. Shortly before this battle the Spartan navy, of which he had received the supreme command, was totally defeated off Cnidus by a powerful Persian fleet under Conon and Pharnabazus.

Subsequently Agesilaus took a prominent part in the Corinthian war, making several successful expeditions into Corinthian territory and capturing Lechaeum and Piraeum. The loss, however, of a mora, which was destroyed by Iphicrates, neutralized these successes, and Agesilaus returned to Sparta. In 389 he conducted a campaign in Acarnania, but two years later the Peace of Antalcidas, which was warmly supported by Agesilaus, put an end to hostilities. When war broke out afresh with Thebes the king twice invaded Boeotia (378, 377), and it was on his advice that Cleombrotus was ordered to march against Thebes in 371. Cleombrotus was defeated at Leuctra and the Spartan supremacy overthrown. In 370 Agesilaus tried to restore Spartan prestige by an invasion of Mantinean territory, and his prudence and heroism saved Sparta when her enemies, led by Epaminondas, penetrated Laconia that same year, and again in 362 when they all but succeeded in seizing the city by a rapid and unexpected march. The battle of Mantinea (362), in which Agesilaus took no part, was followed by a general peace: Sparta, however, stood aloof, hoping even yet to recover her supremacy. In order to gain money for prosecuting the war Agesilaus had supported the revolted satraps, and in 361 he went to Egypt at the head of a mercenary force to aid Tachos against Persia. He soon transferred his services to Tachos's cousin and rival Nectanabis, who, in return for his help, gave him a sum of over 200 talents. On his way home Agesilaus died at the age of 84, after a reign of some 41 years.

A man of small stature and unimpressive appearance, he was somewhat lame from birth, a fact which was used as an argument against his succession, an oracle having warned Sparta against a ``lame reign.'' He was a successful leader in guerilla warfare, alert and quick, yet cautious--a man, moreover, whose personal bravery was unquestioned. As a statesman he won himself both enthusiastic adherents and bitter enemies, but of his patriotism there can be no doubt. He lived in the most frugal style alike at home and in the field, and though his campaigns were undertaken largely to secure booty, he was content to enrich the state and his friends and to return as poor as he had set forth. . The worst trait in his character is his implacable hatred of Thebes, which led directly to the battle of Leuctra and Sparta's fall from her position of supremacy.

See lives of Agesilaus by Xenophon (the panegyric of a friend), Cornelius Nepos and Plutarch; Xenophon's Hellenica and Diodorus xiv., xv. Among modern authorities, besides the general histories of Greece, J. C. F. Manso, Sparta, iii. 39 ff.; G. F. Hertzberg, Das Leben des Konigs Agesilaos II. von Sparta (1856); Buttmann, Agesilaus Sohn des Archidamus (1872); C. Haupt, Agesilaus in Asien (1874); E. von Stern, Geschichte der spartanischen und thebanischen Hegemonie (1884). (M. N. T.)

AGGLOMERATE (from the Lat. agglomerare, to form into a ball, glomus, glomeris), a term used in botany, meaning crowded in a close cluster or head, and, in geology, applied to the accumulations of coarse volcanic ejectamenta such as frequently occur near extinct or active volcanoes. Agglomerates in the geological sense, with which this article is concerned, consist typically of blocks of various igneous rocks, mixed often with more or less material of rudimentary origin and embedded in a finer-grained matrix, similar in nature to the coarser fragments. As distinguished from ordinary ash beds or tuffs, they are essentially coarser, less frequently well-bedded; they are less persistent and tend to occur locally, but may attain a very great thickness. Showers of fine ash may be distributed over a wide area of country and will form thin layers of great extent. Coarser accumulations gather only near the actual foci of eruption (craters, fissures, &c.). When the activity of a volcanic vent comes to an end, the orifice is often choked by masses of debris, which will in time become compacted into firm agglomerates. Hence rocks of this type very commonly mark the sites of necks, the remains of once-active volcanic craters. In this connexion they are of especial interest to geologists, as it is always important to be able to locate the exact points at which volcanic products, such as lavas and ash-beds, were emitted.

The blocks in agglomerates vary greatly in size. Some are thirty or forty feet in diameter, and weigh many tons; these are usually pieces of the strata through which the volcano has forced an outlet. They are never far from the crater; most of them, in fact, lie within its boundaries, and cases are known in which enormous masses of this kind (half an acre in area) have been found in such situations. They are masses which have been dislodged, by fissures and landslides, from the crater's walls and have tumbled into the cavity. Pieces of sandstone, limestone and shale occur in the agglomerates mixed with volcanic materials, and very often have been baked and partly recrystallized by contact with the hot igneous rocks and the gases discharged by the volcano. At Vesuvius such blocks of altered limestone are rich in new minerals and are well known to collectors.

Agglomerates also are usually full of volcanic bombs. These are spongy globular masses of lava which have been shot from the crater at a time when liquid molten lava was exposed in it, and was frequently shattered by the sudden outbursts of steam. These bombs were more or less viscous at the moment of ejection and by rotation in the air acquired their spheroidal form. They are commonly one or two feet in diameter, but specimens as large as nine or twelve feet have been observed. There is less variety in their composition at any volcanic centre than in the case of the foreign blocks above described. They correspond in nature to the lava which at the time fills the crater of the volcano, and as this varies only very slowly the bombs belong mostly to only a few kinds of rock and are similar in composition to the lava flows.

Crystalline masses of a different kind occur in some numbers in certain agglomerates. They consist of volcanic minerals very much the same as those formed in the lavas, but exhibiting certain peculiarities which indicate that they have formed slowly under pressure at considerable depths. Hence they bear a resemblance to plutonic igneous rocks, but are more correctly to be regarded as agglomerations of crystals formed within the liquid lava as it slowly rose towards the surface, and at a subsequent period cast out by violent steam explosions. The sanidinites of the Eifel belong to this group. At Vesuvius, Ascension, St Vincent and many other volcanoes, they form a not inconsiderable part of the coarser ash-beds. Their commonest minerals are olivine, anorthite, hornblende, augite, biotite and leucite.

Agglomerates occur wherever volcanoes are known. In many parts of Britain they attain a great development either in beds alternating with lavas or as the material occupying necks. In the latter case they are often penetrated by dikes. They also show a steep, angular, funnel-shaped dip (e.g. Arthur's Seat, Edinburgh), and may contain thin layers of clay or ashy sand-stone, which gathered in the crater during intervals of repose. (J. S. F.)

AGGLUTINATION (Lat. ad, and gluten, glutinare, literally to fasten together with glue), a term used technically in philology for the method of word-formation by which two significant words or roots are joined together in a single word to express a combination of the two meanings each of which retains its force. This juxtaposition or conjoining of roots is characteristic of languages such as the Turkish and Japanese, which are therefore known as agglutinative, as opposed to others, known generically as inflexional, in which differences of termination or combinations in which all separate identity disappears are predominant.

The term was also formerly used by associationist philosophers for those mental associations which were regarded as peculiarly close. Combination in its simplest form has been called Agglutination by W. Wundt.

AGGRAVATION (from Lat. ad, increasing, and gravis, heavy), the making anything graver or more serious, especially of offences; also used as synonymous with ``irritation.'' In the canon law ``aggravation'' was a form of ecclesiastical censure, threatening excommunication after three disregarded admonitions.

AGGREGATION (from the Lat. ad, to, gregare, to collect together), in physics, a collective term for the forms or states in which matter exists. Three primary ``states of aggregation'' are recognized--gaseous, liquid and solid. Generally, if a solid be heated to a certain temperature, it melts or fuses, assuming the liquid condition (see FUSION); if the heating be continued the liquid boils and becomes a vapour (see VAPORIZATION.) On the other hand, if a gas be sufficiently cooled and compressed, it liquefies; this transition is treated theoretically in the article CONDENSATION OF GASES, and experimentally in the article LIQUID GASES.

AGGTELEK, a village of Hungary, in the county of Gomor, situated to the south of Rozsnyo, on the road from Budapest to Dobsina. Pop. (1900) 557. In the neighbourhood is the celebrated Aggtelek or Baradla cavern, one of the largest and most remarkable stalactite grottos in Europe. It has a length, together with its ramifications, of over 5 miles, and is formed of two caverns--one known for several centuries, and another discovered by the naturalist Adolf Schmidl in 1856. Two entrances give access to the grotto, an old one extremely narrow, and a new one, made in 1890, through which the exploration of the cavern can be made in about 8 hours, half the time it took before. The cavern is composed of a labyrinth of passages and large and small halls, and is traversed by a stream. In these caverns there are numerous stalactite structures, which, from their curious and fantastic shapes, have received such names as the Image of the Virgin, the Mosaic Altar, &c. The principal parts are the Paradies with the finest stalactites, the Astronomical Tower and the Beinhaus. Rats, frogs and bats form actually the only animal life in the caves, but a great number of antediluvian animal bones have been found here, as well as human bones and numerous remains of prehistoric human settlements.

AGINCOURT (AZINCOURT), a village of northern France in the department of Pas de Calais, 14 m. N.W. of St Pol by road, famous on account of the victory, on the 25th of October 1415, of Henry V. of England over the French. The battle was fought in the defile formed by the wood of Agincourt and that of Tramecourt, at the northern exit of which the army under d'Albret, constable of France, had placed itself so as to bar the way to Calais against the English forces which had been campaigning on the Somme. The night of the 24th of October was spent by the two armies on the ground, and the English had but little shelter from the heavy rain which fell. Early on the 25th, St Crispin's day, Henry arrayed his little army (about 1000 men-at-arms, 6000 archers, and a few thousands of other foot). It is probable that the usual three ``battles'' were drawn up in line, each with its archers on the flanks and the dismounted men-at-arms in the centre; the archers being thrown forward in wedge-shaped salients, almost exactly as at Crecy (q.v..) The French, on the other hand, were drawn up in three lines, each line formed in deep masses. They were at least four times more numerous than the English, but restricted by the nature of the ground to the same extent of front, they were unable to use their full weight (cf. Bannockburn); further, the deep mud prevented their artillery from taking part, and the crossbowmen were as usual relegated to the rear of the knights and men-at-arms. All were dismounted save a few knights and men-at-arms on the flanks, who were intended to charge the archers of the enemy. For three hours after sunrise there was no fighting; then Henry, finding that the French would not advance, moved his army farther into the defile. The archers fixed the pointed stakes, which they carried to ward off cavalry charges, and opened the engagement with flights of arrows. The chivalry of France, undisciplined and careless of the lesson of Crecy and Poitiers, was quickly stung into action, and the French mounted men charged, only to be driven back in confusion. The constable himself headed the leading line of dismounted men-at-arms; weighted with their armour, and sinking deep into the mud with every step, they yet reached and engaged the English men-at-arms; for a time the fighting was severe. The thin line of the defenders was borne back and King Henry was almost beaten to the ground. But at this moment the archers, taking their hatchets, swords or other weapons, penetrated the gaps in the now disordered French, who could not move to cope with their unarmoured assailants, and were slaughtered or taken prisoners to a man. The second line of the French came on, only to be engulfed in the melee; its leaders, like those of the first line, were killed or taken, and the commanders of the third sought and found their death in the battle, while their men rode off to safety. The closing scene of the battle was a half-hearted attack made by a body of fugitives, which led merely to the slaughter of the French prisoners, which was ordered by Henry because he had not enough men both to guard them and to meet the attack. The slaughter ceased when the assailants drew off. The total loss of the English is stated at thirteen men-at-arms (including the duke of York, grandson of Edward III.) and about 100 of the foot. The French lost 5000 of noble birth killed, including the constable, 3 dukes, 5 counts and 90 barons; 1000 more were taken prisoners, amongst them the duke of Orleans (the Charles d'Orleans of literature).

See Sir Harris Nicolas, Battle of Agincourt; Fortescue, History of the British Army, vol. i.; and H. B. George, Battles of English History.

AGIO (Ital. aggio, exchange, discount, premium), a term used in commerce in three slightly different connexions. (a) The variations from fixed pars or rates of exchange in the currencies of different countries. For example, in most of the gold-standard countries, the standard coin is kept up to a uniform point of fineness, so that an English sovereign fresh from the mini will bear the following constant relation to coins of other countries in a similar condition:--L. 1 =frcs. 25.221 =mks. 2O.429=$4.867, &c. This is what is known as the mint par of exchange. But the mint par of exchange, say, between France and England is not necessarily the market value of French currency in England, or English currency in France. The balance of trade between the various countries is the factor determining the rate of exchange. Should the balance of trade (q.v.) be against England, money must be remitted to France in payment of the indebtedness, but owing to the cost for,the transmission of specie there will be a demand for bills drawn on Paris as a cheaper and more expeditious method of sending money, and it therefore will be necessary, in order to procure the one of the higher current value, to pay a premium for it, called the agio. (b) The term is also used to denote the difference in exchange between two currencies in the same country; where silver coinage is the legal tender, agio is sometimes allowed for payment in the more convenient form of gold, or where the paper currency of a country is reduced below the bullion which it professes to represent, an agio is payable on the appreciated currency. (c) Lastly, in some states the coinage is so debased, owing to the wear of circulation, that the real is greatly reduced below the nominal value. Supposing that this reduction amounts to 5%, then if 100 sovereigns were offered as payment of a debt in England while such sovereigns were current there at their nominal value, they would be received as just payment; but if they were offered as payment of the same amount of debt in a foreign state, they would be received only at their intrinsic value of L. 95, the additional L. 5 constituting the agio. Where the state keeps its coinage up to a standard value no agio is required.

AGIRA (formerly SAN FILIPPO D'ARGIRO), a town of the province of Catania, Sicily, with a railway station 4 1/2 m. to the south of the town, 35 m. W. of Catania. Pop. (1901) 17,738. It occupies the site of Agyrion, an ancient Sicel city which was ruled by tyrants, one of whom, Agyris, was the most powerful ruler in the centre of Sicily. He was a contemporary of Dionysius I., and with him successfully resisted the Carthaginians when they invaded the territory of Agyrium in 392 B.C. Agira was not colonized by the Greeks until Timoleon drove out the last tyrant in 339 B.C. and erected various splendid buildings of which no traces remain. Agyrion was the birthplace of the historian Diodorus Siculus.

AGIS, the name of four Spartan kings:--

(1) Son of Eurysthenes, founder of the royal house of the Agiadae (Pausanias iii. 2.1). His genealogy was traced through Aristodemus, Aristomachus, Cleodaeus and Hyllus to Heracles (Herodotus vii. 204), and he belongs rather to mythology than to history. Tradition ascribed to him the capture of the maritime town of Helos, which resisted his attempt to curtail its guaranteed rights, and the institution of the class of serfs called Helots (q.v..)

Ephorus ap. Strabo, viii. p. 365.

(2) Son of Archidamus II., Eurypontid, commonly called Agis I. He succeeded his father, probably in 427 B.C., and from his first invasion of Attica in 425 down to the close of the Peloponnesian war was the chief leader of the Spartan operations on land. After the conclusion of the peace of Nicias (421 B.C.) he marched against the Argives in defence of Epidaurus, and after skilful manoeuvring surrounded the Argive army, and seemed to have victory within his grasp when he unaccountably concluded a four months' truce and withdrew his forces. The Spartans were indignant, and when the Argives and their allies, in flagrant disregard of the truce, took Arcadian Orchomenus and prepared to march on Tegea, their fury knew no bounds, and Agis escaped having his house razed and a fine of 100,000 drachmae imposed only by promising to atone for his error by a signal victory. This promise he brilliantly fulfilled by routing the forces of the Argive confederacy at the battle of Mantinea (418), the moral effect of which was out of all proportion to the losses inflicted on the enemy. In the winter 417-416 a further expedition to Argos resulted in the destruction of the half-finished Long Walls and the capture of Hysiae. In 413, on the suggestion of Alcibiades, he fortified Decelea in Attica, where he remained directing operations until, after the battle of Aegospotami (405), he took the leading part in the blockade of Athens, which was ended in spring 404 by the surrender of the city. Subsequently he invaded and ravaged Elis, forcing the Eleans to acknowledge the freedom of their perioeci and to allow Spartans to take part in the Olympic games and sacrifices. He fell ill on his return from Delphi, where he had gone to dedicate a tithe of the spoils, and, probably in 401, died at Sparta, where he was buried with unparalleled solemnity and pomp.

Thuc. iii. 89, iv. 2. 6, v., vii. 19. 27, viii.; Xenophon, Hellenica, i 1. ii. 2. 3, iii. 2. 3; Diodorus xii. 35, xiii. 72, 73, 107; Pausanias iii. 8. 3-8; Plutarch, Lysander ix. 14. 22, Alcibiades 23-25, Lycurgus 12, Agesilaus i. 3, de Tranquill. Anim. 6. (See PELOPONNESIAN WAR.)

(3) Son of Archidamus III., of the Eurypontid line, commonly called Agis II. He succeeded his father in 338 B.C., on the very day of the battle of Chaeronea. During Alexander's Asiatic campaign he revolted against Macedonia (333 B.C.) and, with the aid of Persian money and ships and a force of 8000 Greek mercenaries, gained considerable successes in Crete. In the Peloponnese he routed a force under Corragus and, although Athens held aloof, he was joined by Elis, Achaea (except Pellene) and Arcadia, with the exception of Megalopolis, which the allies besieged. Antipater marched rapidly to its relief at the head of a large army, and the allied force was defeated after a desperate struggle (331) and Agis was slain.

Pausanias iii. 10. 5; Diodorus xvii. 48, 62, 63; Justin xii. 1; Quintus Curtius iv. 1, 39, vi. 1; Arrian, Anabasis, ii. 13.

(4) Son of Eudamidas II., of the Eurypontid family, commonly called Agis III. He succeeded his father probably in 245 B.C., in his twentieth year. At this time the state had been brought to the brink of ruin by the growth of avarice and luxury; there was a glaring inequality in the distribution of land and wealth, and the number of full citizens had sunk to 700, of whom about 100 practically monopolized the land. Though reared in the height of luxury he at once determined to restore the traditional institutions of Lycurgus, with the aid of Lysander, a descendant of the victor of Aegospotami, and Mandrocleidas, a man of noted prudence and courage; even his mother, the wealthy Agesistrata, threw herself heartily into the cause. A powerful but not disinterested ally was found in the king's uncle, Agesilaus, who hoped to rid himself of his debts without losing his vast estates. Lysander as ephor proposed on behalf of Agis that all debts should be cancelled and that Laconia should be divided into 19,500 lots, of which 4500 should be given to Spartiates, whose number was to be recruited from the best of the perioeci and foreigners, and the remaining 15,000 to perioeci who could bear arms. The Agiad king Leonidas having prevailed on the council to reject this measure, though by a majority of only one, was deposed in favour of his son-in-law Cleombrotus, who assisted Agis in bearing down opposition by the threat of force. The abolition of debts was carried into effect, but the land distribution was put off by Agesilaus on various pretexts. At this point Aratus appealed to Sparta to help the Achaeans in repelling an expected Aetolian attack, and Agis was sent to the Isthmus at the head of an army. In his absence the open violence and extortion of Agesilaus, combined with the popular disappointment at the failure of the agrarian scheme, brought about the restoration of Leonidas and the deposition of Cleombrotus, who took refuge at the temple of Apollo at Taenarum and escaped death only at the entreaty of his wife, Leonidas's daughter Chilonis. On his return Agis fled to the temple of Athene Chalcioecus at Sparta, but soon afterwards he was treacherously induced to leave his asylum and, after a mockery of a trial, was strangled in prison, his mother and grandmother sharing the same fate (241). Though too weak and good-natured to cope with the problem which confronted him, Agis was characterized by a sincerity of purpose and a blend of youthful modesty with royal dignity, which render him perhaps the most attractive figure in the whole of Spartan history.

See Plutarch's biography. Pausanias' accounts (ii. 8. 5, vii. 7. 3, viii. 10. 5-8, 27. 13) of his attack on Megalopolis, his seizure of Pellene and his death at Mantinea fighting against the Arcadians, Achaeans and Sicyonians are without foundation (J. C. F. Manso, Sparta, iii. 2. 123-127). See also Manso, op. cit. iii. 1. 276-302; B. Niese, Geschichte der griechischen und makedonischcn Staaten, ii. 299-303. (M. N. T.)

AGISTMENT. To ``agist'' (from O. Fr. agister, derived from gesir--Lat. jacere--to lie) is, in law, to take cattle to graze, for a renumeration. ``Agistment,'' in the first instance, referred more particularly to the proceeds of pasturage in the king's forests, but now means either (a) the contract for taking in and feeding horses or other cattle on pasture land, for the consideration of a weekly payment of money, or (b) the profit derived from such pasturing. Agistment is a contract of bailment, and the bailer is bound to take reasonable care of the animals entrusted to him; he is responsible for damages and injury which result from ordinary casualties, if it be proved that such might have been prevented by the exercise of great care. There is no lien on the cattle for the price of the agistment, unless by express agreement. Under the Agricultural Holdings Act 1883, agisted cattle cannot be distrained on for rent if there be other sufficient distress to be found, and if such other distress be not found, and the cattle be distrained, the owner may redeem them on paying the price of their agistment. The tithe of agistment or ``tithe of cattle and other produce of grass lands,'' was formally abolished by the act of union in 1707, on a motion submitted with a view to defeat that measure.

AGITATORS, or ADJUTATORS, the name given to representatives elected in 1647 by the different regiments of the English Parliamentary army. The word really means an agent, but it was confused with ``adjutant,'' often called ``agitant,'' a title familiar to the soldiers, and thus the form ``adjutator'' came into use. Early in 1647 the Long Parliament wished either to disband many of the regiments or to send them to Ireland. The soldiers, whose pay was largely in arrear, refused to accept either alternative, and eight of the cavalry regiments elected agitators, called at first commissioners, who laid their grievances before the three generals, and whose letter was read in the House of Commons on the 30th of April 1647. The other regiments followed the example of the cavalry, and the agitators, who belonged to the lower ranks of the army, were supported by many of the officers, who showed their sympathy by signing the Declaration of the army. Cromwell and other generals succeeded to some extent in pacifying the troops by promising the payment of arrears for eight weeks at once; but before the return of the generals to London parliament had again decided to disband the army, and soon afterwards fixed the 1st of June as the date on which this process was to begin. Again alarmed, the agitators decided to resist; a mutiny occurred in one regiment and the attempt at disbandment failed. Then followed the seizure of the king by Cornet Joyce, Cromwell's definite adherence to the policy of the army, the signing of the manifestoes, a Humble Representation and a Solemn Engagement, and the establishment of the army council composed of officers and agitators. Having, at an assembly on Thriplow Heath, near Royston, virtually refused the offers made by parliament, the agitators demanded a march towards London and the ``purging'' of the House of Commons. Subsequent events are part of the general history of England. Gradually the agitators ceased to exist, but many of their ideas were adopted by the Levellers (q.v.), who may perhaps be regarded as their successors. Gardiner says of them, ``Little as it was intended at the time, nothing was more calculated than the existence of this elected body of agitators to give to the army that distinctive political and religious character which it ultimately bore.''

See S. R. Gardiner, History of the Great Civil War, vols. iii. and iv. (London, 1905).

AGLIARDI, ANTONIO (1832- ), papal diplomatist, was born at Cologno (Bergamo), Italy, on the 4th of September 1832. He studied theology and canon law, and, after acting as parish priest in his native diocese for twelve years, was sent by the pope to Canada as a bishop's chaplain. On his return he was appointed secretary to the Propaganda. In 1884 he was created by Leo XIII. archbishop of Caesarea in partibus and sent to India to report on the establishment of the hierarchy there. In 1887 he again visited India, to carry out the terms of the concordat arranged with Portugal. The same year he was appointed secretary to the Congregation super negotiis ecclesiae extraordinariis, in 1889 became papal nuncio at Munich and in 1892 at Vienna. Allowing himself to be involved in the ecclesiastical disputes by which Hungary was divided in 1895, he was made the subject of formal complaint by the Hungarian government and in 1896 was recalled. His services were rewarded by a Cardinalate and the archbishopric of Ferrara. In 1903 he was named vice-chancellor of the Roman Church.

AGNANO, LAGO DI, a circular lake, 5 m. W. of Naples, Italy. It was apparently not formed until the middle ages, as it is not mentioned by ancient writers; it was drained in 1870. It occupied the crater of an extinct volcano, 4 m. in circumference. On the south bank are the Stufe di S. Germano, natural sulphureous vapour baths, and close by is the Grotta del Cane, from the floor of which warm carbonic acid gas constantly rises to a height of 18 in., the fumes of which render a dog insensible in a few seconds. It is mentioned by Pliny (Nat. Hist. ii. 93). Remains of an extensive Roman building and some statues have been discovered close by.

AGNATES (Agnati), in Roman law, persons related through males only, as opposed to cognates. Agnation was founded on the idea of the family held together by the patria potestas; cognatio involves simply the modern idea of kindred.

AGNES, SAINT, a virgin martyr of the Catholic Church. The legend of St Agnes is that she was a Roman maid, by birth a Christian, who suffered martyrdom when but thirteen during the reign of the emperor Diocletian, on the 21st of January 304. The prefect Sempronius wished her to marry his son, and on her refusal condemned her to be outraged before her execution, but her honour was miraculously preserved. When led out to die she was tied to a stake, but the faggots would not burn, whereupon the officer in charge of the troops drew his sword and struck off her head. St Agnes is the patron saint of young girls, who, in rural districts, formerly indulged in all sorts of quaint country magic on St Agnes' Eve (20th-21st January) with a view to discovering their future husbands. This superstition has been immortalized in Keats's poem, ``The Eve of St Agnes.'' St Agnes's bones are supposed to rest in the church of her name at Rome, originally built by Constantine and repaired by Pope Honorius in the 7th century. Here on her festival (21st of January) two lambs are specially blessed after pontifical high mass, and their wool is later woven into pallia (see PALLIUM.)

AGNES OF MERAN (d. 1201), queen of France, was the daughter of Bertold IV., duke of Meran in Tirol. She is called Marie by some of the chroniclers. In June 1196 she married Philip II., king of France, who had repudiated Ingeborg of Denmark in 1193. The pope espoused the cause of Ingeborg; but Philip did not submit until 1200, when, interdict having been added to excommunication, he consented to a separation from Agnes. She died in July of the next year, at the castle of Poissy, and was buried in the church of St Corentin, near Nantes. Her two children by Philip II., Philip, count of Clermont (d. 1234), and Mary, who married Philip, count of Namur, were legitimized by Innocent III. in 1201 on the demand of the king. Little is known of the personality of Agnes, beyond the remarkable influence which she exercised over Philip II. She has been made the heroine of a tragedy by Francois Ponsard, Agnes de Meranie.

See the notes of Robert Davidsohn in Philipp II. August von Frankreich und Ingeborg (Stuttgart, 1888). A genealogical notice is furnished by the Chronicon of the monk Alberic (Aubry) of Fontaines, (Albericus Trium Fontium) in Pertz, Scriptores, vol. xxiii. pp. 872 f., and by the Genealogia Wettinensis, ibid. p. 229.

AGNESI, MARIA GAETANA (1718-1799), Italian mathematician, linguist and philosopher, was born at Milan on the 16th of May 1718, her father being professor of mathematics in the university of Bologna. When only nine years old she had such command of Latin as to be able to publish an elaborate address in that language, maintaining that the pursuit of liberal studies was not improper for her sex. By her thirteenth year she had acquired Greek, Hebrew, French, Spanish, German and other languages. Two years later her father began to assemble in his house at stated intervals a circle of the most learned men in Bologna, before whom she read and maintained a series of theses on the most abstruse philosophical questions. Records of these meetings are given in de Brosse's Lettres sur l'Italie and in the Propositiones Philosophicae, which her father caused to be published in 1738. These displays, being probably not altogether congenial to Maria, who was of a retiring disposition, ceased in her twentieth year, and it is even said that she had at that age a strong desire to enter a convent. Though the wish was not gratified, she lived from that time in a retirement almost conventual, avoiding all society and devoting herself entirely to the study of mathematics. The most valuable result of her labours was the Instituzioni analitiche ad uso della gioventu italiana, a work of great merit, which was published at Milan in 1748. The first volume treats of the analysis of finite quantities. and the second of the analysis of infinitesimals. A French translation of the second volume by P. T. d'Antelmy, with additions by Charles Bossut (1730-1814), appeared at Paris in 1775; and an English translation of the whole work by John Colson (1680-1760), the Lucasian professor of mathematics at Cambridge, was published in 1801 at the expense of Baron Maseres. Madame Agnesi also wrote a commentary on the Traite analytique des sections coniques of the marquis de l'Hopital, which, though highly praised by those who saw it in manuscript, was never published. She invented and discussed the curve known as the ``witch of Agnesi'' (q.v.) or versiera. In 1750, on the illness of her father, she was appointed by Pope Benedict XIV. to the chair of mathematics and natural Philosophy at Bologna. After the death of her father in 1752 she carried out a long-cherished purpose by giving herself to the study of theology, and especially of the Fathers. After holding for some years the office of directress of the Hospice Trivulzio for Blue Nuns at Milan, she herself joined the sisterhood, and in this austere order ended her days on the 9th of January 1799.

Her sister, MARIA TERESA AGNESI (1724-1780), a well-known Italian pianist and composer, was born at Milan in 1724. She composed several cantatas, two pianoforte concertos and five operas, Sofenisbe, Ciro in Armenia, Nitocri, Il Re Pastore and Insubria consolata.

See Antonio Francesco Frisi, Eloge historique de Mademoiselle Agnesi, translated by Boulard (Paris, 1807); Milesi-Mojon, Vita di M. G. Agnesi (Milan, 1836); J. Boyer, ``La Mathematicienne Agnesi'' in the Revue Catholique des revues francaises et etrangeres (Paris, 1897).

AGNEW, DAVID HAYES (1818-1892), American surgeon, was born in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania, on the 24th of November 1818. He graduated from the medical department of the university of Pennsylvania in 1838, and a few years later set up in practice at Philadelphia and became a lecturer at the Philadelphia School of Anatomy. He was appointed surgeon at the Philadelphia Hospital in 1854 and was the founder of its pathological museum. For twenty-six years (1863-1889) he was connected with the medical faculty of the university of Pennsylvania, being elected professor of operative surgery in 1870 and professor of the principles and practice of surgery in the following year. From 1865 to 1884--except for a brief interval --he was a surgeon at the Pennsylvania Hospital. During the American Civil War he was consulting surgeon in the Mower Army Hospital, near Philadelphia, and acquired considerable reputation for his operations in cases of gun-shot wounds. He attended as operating surgeon when President Garfield was fatally wounded by the bullet of an assassin in 1881. He was the author of several works, the most important being The Principles and Practice of Surgery (1878-1883). He died at Philadelphia on the 22nd of March 1892.

AGNI, the Hindu God of Fire, second only to Indra in the power and importance attributed to him in Vedic mythology. His name is the first word of the first hymn of the Rig-veda: ``Agni, I entreat, divine appointed priest of sacrifice.'' The sacrifices made to Agni pass to the gods, for Agni is a messenger from and to the gods; but, at the same time, he is more than a mere messenger, he is an immortal, for another hymn runs: ``No god indeed, no mortal is beyond the might of thee, the mighty One. . . .'' He is a god who lives among men, miraculously reborn each day by the fire-drill, by the friction of the two sticks which are regarded as his parents; he is the supreme director of religious ceremonies and duties,and even has the power of influencing the lot of man in the future world. He is worshipped under a threefold form, fire on earth, lightning and the sun. His cult survived the metamorphosis of the ancient Vedic nature-worship into modern Hinduism, and there still are in India fire-priests (agnihotri) whose duty is to superintend his worship. The sacred fire-drill for procuring the temple-fire by friction--symbolic of Agni's daily miraculous birth--is still used. In pictorial art Agni is always represented as red, two-faced, suggesting his destructive and beneficent qualities, and with three legs and seven arms.

See W. J. Wilkins, Hindu Mythology (London, 1900); A. A. Macdonell, Vedic Mythology (Strassburg, 1897).

AGNOETAE (Gr. agnoeo, to be ignorant of), a monophysite sect who maintained that Christ's human nature was like other men's in all respects, including limited knowledge. Its founder was Themistius, a deacon in Alexandria in the 6th century. The sect was anathematized by Gregory the Great.

AGNOIOLOGY (from Gr. agnoi-a, ignorance), the science or study of ignorance, which determines its quality and conditions.

AGNOSTICISM. The term ``agnostic'' was invented by Huxley in 1869 to describe the philosophical and religious attitude of those who hold that we can have scientific or real knowledge of phenomena only, and that so far as what may lie behind phenomena is concerned--God, immortality, &c.--there is no evidence which entitles us either to deny or aflirm anything. The attitude itself is as old as Scepticism (q.v.); but the expressions ``agnostic'' and ``agnosticism'' were applied by Huxley to sum up his deductions from those contemporary developments of metaphysics with which the names of Hamilton (``the Unconditioned'') and Herbert Spencer (``the Unknowable'') were associated; and it is important, therefore, to fix precisely his own intellectual standpoint in the matter. Though Huxley only began to use the term ``agnostic'' in 1869, his opinions had taken shape some time before that date. In a letter to Charles Kingsley (September 23, 1860) he wrote very fully concerning his beliefs:--

``I neither affirm nor deny the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing it, but, on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it. I have no a priori objections to the doctrine. No man who has to deal daily and hourly with nature can trouble himself about a priori difficulties. Give me such evidence as would justify me in believing in anything else, and I will believe that. Why should I not? It is not half so wonderful as the conservation of force or the indestructibility of matter. . . .

``It is no use to talk to me of analogies and probabilities. I know what I mean when I say I believe in the law of the inverse squares, and I will not rest my life and my hopes upon weaker convictions. . . .

``That my personality is the surest thing I know may be true. But the attempt to conceive what it is leads me into mere verbal subtleties. I have champed up all that chaff about the ego and the non-ego, noumena and phenomena, and all the rest of it, too often not to know that in attempting even to think of these questions, the human intellect flounders at once out of its depth.''

And again, to the same correspondent, the 5th of May 1863:--

``I have never had the least sympathy with the a priori reasons against orthodoxy, and I have by nature and disposition the greatest possible antipathy to all the atheistic and infidel school. Nevertheless I know that I am, in spite of myself, exactly what the Christian would call, and, so far as I can see, is justified in calling, atheist and infidel. l cannot see one shadow or tittle of evidence that the great unknown underlying the phenomenon of the universe stands to us in the relation of a Father--loves us and cares for us as Christianity asserts. So with regard to the other great Christian dogmas, immortality of soul and future state of rewards and punishments, what possible objection can I--who am compelled perforce to believe in the immortality of what we call Matter and Force, and in a very unmistakable present state of rewards and punishments for our deeds--have to these doctrines? Give me a scintilla of evidence, and I am ready to jump at them.''

Of the origin of the name ``agnostic'' to cover this attitude, Huxley gave (Coll. Ess. v. pp. 237-239) the following account:--

``When I reached intellectual maturity, and began to ask myself whether I was an atheist, a theist or a pantheist, a materialist or an idealist, a Christian or a freethinker, I found that the more I learned and reflected, the less ready was the answer. The one thing on which most of these good people were agreed was the one thing in which I differed from them. They were quite sure they had attained a certain `gnosis'--had more or less successfully solved the problem of existence; while I was quite sure that I had not, and had a pretty strong conviction that the problem was insoluble. This was my situation when I had the good fortune to find a place among the members of that remarkable confraternity of antagonists, the Metaphysical Society. Every variety of philosophical and theological opinion was represented there; most of my colleagues were -ists of one sort or another; and I, the man without a rag of a belief to cover himself with, could not fail to have some of the uneasy feelings which must have beset the historical fox when, after leaving the trap in which his tail remained, he presented himself to his normally elongated companions. So I took thought, and invented what I conceived to be the appropriate title of `agnostic.' It came into my head as suggestively antithetic to the `gnostic' of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very things of which I was ignorant. To my great satisfaction the term took.''

This account is confirmed by R. H. Hutton, who in 1881 wrote that the word ``was suggested by Huxley at a meeting held previous to the formation of the now defunct Metaphysical Society at Mr Knowles's house on Clapham Common in 1869, in my hearing. He took it from St Paul's mention of the altar to the Unknown God.'' Hutton here gives a variant etymology for the word, which may be therefore taken as partly derived from agnostos (the ``unknown'' God), and partly from an antithesis to ``gnostic''; but the meaning remains the same in either case. The name, as Huxley said, ``took''; it was constantly used by Hutton in the Spectator and became a fashionable label for contemporary unbelief in Christian dogma. Hutton himself frequently misrepresented the doctrine by describing it as ``belief in an unknown and unknowable God''; but agnosticism as defined by Huxley meant not belief, but absence of belief, as much distinct from belief on the one hand as from disbelief on the other; it was the half-way house between the two, where all questions were ``open.'' All that Huxley asked for was evidence, either for or against; but this he believed it impossible to get. Occasionally he too mis-stated the meaning of the word he had invented, and described agnosticism as meaning ``that a man shall not say he knows or believes what he has no scientific ground for professing to know or believe.'' But as the late Rev. A. W. Momerie remarked, this would merely be ``a definition of honesty; in that sense we ought all to be agnostics.''

Agnosticism really rests on the doctrine of the Unknowable, the assertion that concerning certain objects--among them the Deity--we never can have any ``scientific'' ground for belief. This way of solving, or passing over, the ultimate problems of thought has had many followers in cultured circles imbued with the new physical science of the day, and with disgust for the dogmatic creeds of contemporary orthodoxy; and its outspoken and even aggressive vindication by physicists of the eminence of Huxley had a potent influence upon the attitude taken towards metaphysics, and upon the form which subsequent Christian apologetics adopted. As a nickname the term ``agnostic'' was soon misused to cover any and every variation of scepticism, and just as popular preachers confused it with atheism (q.v.) in their denunciations, so the callow freethinker--following Tennyson's path of ``honest doubt''--classed himself with the agnostics, even while he combined an instinctively Christian theism with a facile rejection of the historical evidences for Christianity.

The term is now less fashionable, though the state of mind persists. Huxley's agnosticism was a natural consequence of the intellectual and philosophical conditions of the 'sixties, when clerical intolerance was trying to excommunicate scientific discovery because it appeared to clash with the book of Genesis. But as the theory of evolution was accepted, a new spirit was gradually introduced into Christian theology, which has turned the controversies between religion and science into other channels and removed the temptation to flaunt a disagreement. A similar effect has been produced by the philosophical reaction against Herbert Spencer, and by the perception that the canons of evidence required in physical science must not be exalted into universal rules of thought. It does not follow that justification by faith must be eliminated in spiritual matters where sight cannot follow, because the physicist's duty and success lie in pinning belief solely on verification by physical phenomena, when they alone are in question; and for mankind generally, though possibly not for an exceptional man like Huxley, an impotent suspension of judgment on such issues as a future life or the Being of God is both unsatisfying and demoralizing.

It is impossible here to do more than indicate the path out of the difficulties raised by Huxley in the letter to Kingsley quoted above. They involve an elaborate discussion, not only of Christian evidences, but of the entire subject-matter alike of Ethics and Metaphysics, of Philosophy as a whole, and of the philosophies of individual writers who have dealt in their different ways with the problems of existence and epistemology. It is, however, permissible to point out that, as has been exhaustively argued by Professor J. Ward in his Gifford lectures for 1896-1898 (Naturalism and Agnosticism, 1899), Huxley's challenge ( ``I know what I mean when I say I believe in the law of the inverse squares, and I will not rest my life and my hopes upon weaker convictions'') is one which a spiritualistic philosophy need not shrink from accepting at the hands of naturalistic agnosticism. If, as Huxley admits, even putting it with unnecessary force against himself,``the immortality of man is not half so wonderful as the conservation of force or the indestructibility of matter,'' the question then is, how far a critical analysis of our belief in the last-named doctrines will leave us in a position to regard them as the last stage in systematic thinking. It is the pitfall of physical science, immersed as its students are apt to be in problems dealing with tangible facts in the world of experience, that there is a tendency among them to claim a superior status of objective reality and finality for the laws to which their data are found to conform. But these generalizations are not ultimate truths, when we have to consider the nature of experience itself. ``Because reference to the Deity will not serve for a physical explanation in physics, or a chemical explanation in chemistry, it does not therefore follow,'' as Professor Ward says (op. cit. vol. i. p. 24), ``that the sum total of scientific knowledge is equally intelligible whether we accept the theistic hypothesis or not. It is true that every item of scientific knowledge is concerned with some definite relation of definite phenomena, and with nothing else; but, for all that, the systematic organization of such items may quite well yield further knowledge, which transcends the special relations of definite phenomena.''

At the opening of the era of modern scientific discovery, with all its fruitful new generalizations, the still more highly generalized laws of epistemology and of the spiritual constitution of man might well baffle the physicist and lead his intellect to ``flounder.'' It is fundamentally necessary, in order to avoid such floundering, that the ``knowledge'' of things sensible should be kept distinct from the ``knowledge'' of things spiritual; yet in practice they are constantly confused. When the physicist limits the term ``knowledge', to the conclusions from physical apprehensions, his refusal to extend it to conclusions from moral and spiritual apprehensions is merely the consequence of an illegitimate definition. He relies on the validity of his perceptions of physical facts; but the saint and the theologian are no less entitled to rely on the validity of their moral and spiritual experiences. In each case the data rest on an ultimate basis, undemonstrable, indeed to any one who denies them (even if he be called mad for doing so), except by the continuous process of working out their own proofs, and showing their consistency with, or necessity in, the scheme of things terrestrial on the one hand, or the mind and happiness of man on the other. The tests in each case differ; and it is as irrelevant for the theologian to dispute the ``knowledge'' of the physicist, by arguments from faith and religion, as it is for the physicist to deny the ``knowledge'' of the theologian from the point of view of one who ignores the possibility of spiritual apprehension altogether. On the ground of secular history and secular evidence both might reasonably meet, as regards the facts, though not perhaps as to their interpretation; but the reason why they ultimately differ is to be found simply in the difference of their mental attitude towards the nature of ``knowledge,'-itself a difference of opinion as to the nature of man.

In addition to the literature cited above, see L. Stephen, An Agnostic's Apology (1893); R. Flint, Agnosticism (1903); T. Bailey Saunders, The Quest of Faith, chap. ii. (1899); A. W. Benn, English Rationalism in the XIXth Century (London, 1906). (H. CH.)

AGNUS DEI, the figure of a lamb bearing a cross, symbolical of the Saviour as the ``Lamb of God.'' The device is common in ecclesiastical art, but the name is especially given in the Church of Rome to a small cake made of the wax of the Easter candles and impressed with this figure. Since the 9th century it has been customary for the popes to bless these cakes, and distribute them on the Sunday after Easter among the faithful, by whom they are highly prized as having the power to avert evil. In modern times the distribution has been limited to persons of distinction, and is made by the pope on his accession and every seven years thereafter.

Agnus Dei is also the popular name for the anthem beginning with these words, which is said to have been introduced into the missal by Pope Sergius I. (687-701). Based upon John i. 29, the Latin form is Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi, miserere nobis. In the celebration of the mass it is repeated three times before the communion, and it is also appended to many of the litanies. By the judgment in the case of ``Read and others v. The Bishop of Lincoln'' it was decided in 1890 that the singing of the Agnus Dei in English by the choir during the administration of the Holy Communion, provided that the reception of the elements be not delayed till its conclusion, is not illegal in the Church of England.

For the various ceremonies in the blessing of the Agnus Dei see A. Vacant, Dict. de theologie (cols. 605-613).

AGOBARD (c. 779-840), Carolingian prelate and reformer, became coadjutor to Leidrad, archbishop of Lyons, in 813, and on the death of the latter succeeded him in the see (816). We know nothing of his early life nor of his descent. He pursued the same vigorous policy as his predecessor, who had been one of Charlemagne's most active agents in the reformation of the Church. He was strongly opposed to the schemes of the empress Judith for a redivision of the empire in favour of her son Charles the Bald, Which he regarded as the cause of all the subsequent evils, and supported Lothair and Pippin against their father the emperor Louis I. Deposed in 835 by the council of Thionville, he made his peace with the emperor and was reinstated in 837. Agobard occupies an important place in the Carolingian renaissance. He wrote extensively not only theological works but also political pamphlets and dissertations directed against popular superstitions. These last works are unique in the literature of the time. He denounced the trial by ordeal of fire and water, the belief in witchcraft, and the ascription of tempests to magic, maintained the Carolingian opposition to image-worship, but carried his logic farther and opposed the adoration of the saints. The basis for this crusade was theological, not scientific; but it reveals a clear intellect and independent judgment In his purely theological works Agobard was strictly orthodox, except that he denied the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures. Agobard was reverenced as a saint in Lyons, and although his canonization is disputed his life is given by the Bollandists, Acta Sanctorum, Jun. ii. 748.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.--Agobard's works were lost until 1605, when a manuscript was discovered in Lyons and published by Papirius Masson, again by Baluze in 1666. For later editions see Potthast, Bibliotheca Historica Medii Aevi. The life of Agobard in Ebert's Geschichte der Litteratur des Mittelalters (1880), Band ii., is still one the best to consult. For further indications see A. Molinier, Sources de l'histoire de France, i. p. 235.

AGONALIA, in ancient Rome, festivals celebrated on the 9th of January, 17th of March, 21st of May, and 11th of December in each year in honour of various divinities (Ovid, Fasti, i. 319-332). The word is derived either from agonia, ``a victim,'' or from agonium, ``a festival.''

AGONIC LINES (from Gr. a-, privative, and gonia, an angle), the term given to the imaginary lines on the earth's surface connecting points at which the magnetic needle points to the geographical north and south. (See MAGNETISM, TERRESTRIAL.)

AGONOTHETES, in ancient Greece, the president or superintendent of the sacred games. At first the person who instituted the games and defrayed the expenses was the Agonothetes; but in the great public games, such as the Olympic and Pythian, these presidents were the representatives of different states, or were chosen from the people in whose country the games were celebrated; thus at the Panathenaic festival at Athens ten athlothetae were elected for four years to superintend the various contests. They were variously called aisumnetai, brabeutai, agonarchai, agonodikai, athlothetai (at Athens), eabdouchoi or eabdonomoi (from the rod or sceptre emblematic of their authority), but their functions were generally the same.

AGORA, originally, in primitive times, the assembly of the Greek people, convoked by the king or one of his nobles. The right of speech and vote was restricted to the nobles, the people being permitted to express their opinion only by signs of applause or disapproval. The word then came to be used for the place where assemblies were held, and thus from its convenience as a meeting-place the agora became in most of the cities of Greece the general resort for public and especially commercial intercourse, corresponding in general with the Roman forum. At Athens, with the increase of commerce and political interest, it was found advisable to call public meetings at the Pnyx or the temple of Dionysus; but the important assemblies, such as meetings for ostracism, were held in the agora. In the best days of Greece the agora was the place where nearly all public traffic was conducted. It was most frequented in the forenoon, and then only by men. Slaves did the greater part of the purchasing, though even the noblest citizens of Athens did not scruple to buy and sell there. Citizens were allowed a free market; foreigners and metics had to pay a toll. Public festivals also were celebrated in the open area of the agora. At Athens the agora of classical times was adorned with trees planted by Cimon; around it numerous public buildings were erected, such as the council chamber and the law courts (for its topography, see ATHENS.) Pausanias (especially vi. 24) is the great architectural authority on the agorae of various Greek cities, and details are also given by Vitruvius (v. 1).

AGORACRITUS, a Parian and Athenian sculptor of the age of Phidias, and said to have been his favourite pupil. His most noted work was the statue at Rhamnus of Nemesis, by some attributed to Phidias himself. Of this statue part of the head is in the British Museum; some fragments of the reliefs which adorned the pedestal are in the museum at Athens.

AGORANOMI, magistrates in the republics of Greece, whose position and duties were in many respects similar to those of the aediles of Rome. In Athens there were ten, chosen annually by lot, five of whom took charge of the city and five of the Peiraeus. They maintained order in the markets, settled disputes, examined the quality of the articles exposed for sale, tested weights and measures, collected the harbour dues and enforced the shipping regulations.

AGORDAT, a town of Eritrea, N.E. Africa, on the route between Massawa and Kassala. At Agordat on the 21st of December 1893 the Italian troops under Colonel Arimondi inflicted a severe defeat on the followers of the khalifa. Agordat is protected by a strong fort. (See ERITREA and SUDAN, History.)

AGOSTINI, LEONARDO, Italian antiquary of the 17th century, was born at Siena. After being employed for some time to collect works of art for the Barberini palace, he was appointed by Pope Alexander VII. superintendent of antiquities in the Roman states. He issued a new edition of Paruta's Sicilian Medals, with engravings of 400 additional specimens; and in conjunction with Giovanni Bellori (1615-1696) he also published a work on antique sculptured gems, which was translated into Latin by Jakob Gronovius (Amsterdam, 1685).

AGOSTINO, or AGOSTINI [AUGUSTINUS], PAOLO (1593-1629), Italian musician, was born at Valerano, and studied under G. B. Nanini, as we learn from the dedication in the third and fourth books of his masses, subsequently becoming the son-in-law of his master. He succeeded Ugolini as conductor of the pope's orchestra in St. Peter's. His musical compositions are numerous and of great merit, an Agnus Dei for eight voices being specially admired.

AGOSTINO and AGNOLO (or ANGELO) DA SIENA, Italian architects and sculptors in the first half of the 14th century. Della Valle and other commentators deny that they were brothers. They certainly studied together under Giovanni Pisano, and in 1317 were jointly appointed architects of their native town, for which they designed the Porto Romana, the church and convent of St Francis, and other buildings. On the recommendation of the celebrated Giotto, who styled them the best sculptors of the time, they executed in 1330 the tomb of Bishop Guido Tarlati in the cathedral of Arezzo, which Giotto had designed. It was esteemed one of the finest artistic works of the 14th century, but unfortunately was destroyed by the French under the duke of Anjou.

AGOULT, MARIE CATHERINE SOPHIE DE FLAVIGNY, COMTESSE D' (1805-1876), French author, whose nom de plume was ``Daniel Stern,'' was born at Frankfort-on-Main on the 31st of December 1805. Her father was a French officer who had served in the army of the emigrant princes, and her mother was the daughter of a Frankfort banker. She was married in 1827 to the comte Charles d'Agoult. In Paris she gathered round her a brilliant society which included Alfred de Vigny, Sainte-Beuve, Ingres, Chopin, Meyerbeer, Heine and others. She was separated from her husband, and became the mistress of Franz Liszt. During her frequent travels in Switzerland, France and Italy she made the acquaintance of George Sand, and figures in the Lettres d'un voyageur as'`Arabella.'' By Liszt she had three children--a son who died young; Blandine, who married M. Emile Ollivier; and Cosima, who married first Hans von Bulow and later Richard Wagner. The story of her breach with Liszt is told under a very slight disguise in her novel Nelida (1845). On her return to Paris in 1841 she began to write art criticisms for the Presse, and in 1844 she contributed to the Revue des deux Mondes articles on Bettina von Arnim and on Heinrich Heine, but her views were not acceptable to the editor, and Daniel Stern withdrew to become a contributor to the Revue independante. Mme. d'Agoult was an ardent apostle of the ideas of' 48, and from this date her salon, which had been literary and artistic, took on a more political tone; revolutionists of various nationalities were welcomed by her, and she had an especial friendship and sympathy for Daniele Manin. In 1857 she produced a national drama, Jeanne Darc, which was translated into Italian and presented with brilliant success at Turin. The most important section of Daniel Stern's work is her political and historical essays: Lettres republicaines (1848), Esquisses morales et politiques (1849), Histoire de la Revolution de 1848 (3 vols., 1850-1853), Histoire des commencements de la Republique aux Pays-Bas (1872). Mme. d'Agoult died in Paris on the 5th of March 1876. Her daughter Claire Christine (b. 1830), who married Guy de Charnace, is known as a writer.

See Mme. d'Agoult, Mes Souvenirs (1806-1833), 1877; A. Cuvillier Fleury, Portraits revolutionnaires, vol. i. (1889); J. Mazzini, Lettres de Joseph Mazzini a Daniel Stern (1872): A. Pommier, Madame la comtesse d'Agoult (Daniel Stern), 1876; A. Ungherini, ``Daniel Stern'' in the Revista repubblicana (1880, No. 9); S. Rocheblave, Une Amitie romanesque, George Sand et Madame d'Agoult (1895).

AGOUTI, or AGUTI, the West Indian name of Dasyprocta aguti, a terrestrial rodent of the size of a rabbit, common to Trinidad and Guiana, and classed in the family Caviidae. Under the same term may be included the other species of Dasyprocta, of which there are about half a score in tropical America. Agoutis are slender-limbed rodents, with five front and three hind toes (the first front toe very minute), and very short tails. The hair, especially on the hind-quarters, is coarse and somewhat rough; the colour being generally rufous brown. The molar teeth have cylindrical crowns, with several islands and a single lateral fold of enamel when worn. In habits agoutis are nocturnal, dwelling in forests, where they conceal themselves during the day in hollow tree-trunks, or in burrows among roots. Active and graceful in their movements, their pace is either a kind of trot or a series of springs following one another so rapidly as to look like a gallop. They take readily to water, in which they swim well. Their food comprises leaves, roots, nuts and other fruits. They do much harm to plantations of sugar-cane and bananas. In captivity the females produce only one or two young at a birth.

AGRA, an ancient city of India, which gives its name to a district and division in the United Provinces. It is famous for containing the most perfect specimens of Mogul architecture. Agra, like Delhi, owes much of its importance in both historical and modern times to the Commercial and strategical advantages of its position. The river Jumna, which washes the walls of its fort, was the natural highway for the traffic of the rich delta of Bengal to the heart of India, and it formed, moreover, from very ancient times, the frontier defence of the Aryan stock settled in the plain between the Ganges and the Jumna against their western neighbours, hereditary freebooters who occupied the highlands of Central India. No place was better fitted for both an emporium and a frontier fortress. The river formed an unfordable barrier and also a useful means of communication. Jehangir tells us in his autobiography that before his father Akbar built the present fort, the town was defended by a citadel of great antiquity. For three hundred years the Afghans and other tribes came down from the north and founded kingdoms; and their power radiated from Delhi and Agra. It was Sikandar, of the house of Lodi (A.D. 1500), the last of the Afghan dynasties, who realized the strategic importance of Agra as a point for keeping in check his rebellious vassals to the south. He removed his court there, and Agra from being ``a mere village of old standing,'' says a Persian chronicler, became the capital of a kingdom. In 1526 the city was captured by the emperor Baber, the famous Koh-i-noor diamond being part of the loot; and it was here that Baber announced that his invasion was to be a permanent conquest, and not a mere temporary inroad. It was Baber's grandson Akbar that built the present fort, whose strong and lofty walls of red sandstone are a mile and a,half in circumference. The building was completed in 1665, when Charles II. was on the throne of England and the plague was devastating London. Another building of much the same date is the red stone palace generally attributed to Akbar, but probably of an earlier time, which is the finest example of pure Hindu architecture; while the Moti Masjid, or Pearl Mosque, is an equally perfect example of the Mahommedan style.

But the glory of Agra, the most splendidly poetic building in the world, is the Taj Mahal, the mausoleum built (A.D. 1632) by

Taj Mahal.

the emperor Shah Jahan for the remains of his favourite wife, Mumtaz Manal, in which he himself also also lies buried. The building is of white marble throughout, crowned with a great white dome in the centre, and with a smaller dome at each of its four corners. From the marble terrace which surrounds it rise four tall minarets of the same material, one at each corner. The Taj has been modelled and painted more frequently than any other building in the world, and the word pictures of it are numberless. But it can only be described as a dream in marble. It amply justifies the saying that the Moguls designed like Titans and finished like jewellers. In regard to colour and design the Taj ranks first in the world for purely decorative workmanship; while the perfect symmetry of its exterior once seen can never be forgotten, nor the aerial grace of its domes, rising like marble bubbles into the azure sky. In his History of Architecture, Fergusson says of it:--

``This building is an early example of that system of inlaying with precious stones which became the great characteristic of the style of the Moghals aftrer the death of Akbar. All the spandrils of the Taj, all the angles and more important architectural details, are heightened by being inlaid with precious stones such as agates, bloodstones, jaspers and the like. These are combined in wreaths, scrolls and frets, as exquisite in design as they are beautiful in colour, and relieved by the pure white marble in which they are inlaid, they form the most beautiful and precious style of ornament ever adopted in architecture. 1t is lavishly bestowed on the tombs themselves and the screens which surround them, but more sparingly introduced on the mosque that forms one wing of the Taj, and on the fountains and surrounding buildings. The judgment, indeed, with which this style of ornament is apportioned to the various parts, is almost as remarkable as the ornament itself, and conveys a high idea of the taste and skill of the architects of this age.''

Of the Taj as a whole Lord Roberts says in his Forty-one Years in India:--

``Neither words nor pencil could give to the most imaginative reader the slightest idea of the all-satisfying beauty and purity of this glorious conception. To those who have not already seen it I would say, `Go to India. The Taj alone is well worth the journey.'''

The Taj was designed by Ustad Isa, variously described as a Byzantine Turk and a native of Shiraz in Persia. The pietra dura work belongs to the Persian school and the common belief that it was designed by Austin de Bordeaux, a French architect in the service of Shah Jahan, is probably incorrect.

Agra was formerly the capital of the North-West Provinces, but after the Mutiny the seat of government was removed to Allahabad. Situated 841 m. from Calcutta it is now an important railway centre, whence two main lines diverge southwards towards Bombay. In 1901 the population was 188,022, showing an increase of 12% during the decade. The city contains cotton mills, factories for ginning and pressing cotton, a tannery and boot factory and flour mill. There are also two missionary colleges.

The DISTRICT OF AGRA has an area of 1856 sq. m. Its general appearance is that common to the Doab, a level plain intersected by watercourses and ravines. Its general elevation is estimated at from 650 to 700 ft. above the level of the sea. The district is intersected by the Jumna, and is also watered by the Agra canal. The principal crops are millets, pulses, barley, wheat, cotton and a little indigo. The population in 1901 was 1,060,528, showing an increase of 6% during the decade.

The DIVISION OF AGRA has an area of 10,154 sq. m. In 1901 the population was 5,249,542, showing an increase of 10% during the decade, attributed to the extension of irrigation from canals. It comprises the six districts of Muttra, Agra, Farukhabad, Mainpuri, Etawah and Etah.

For an account of the architecture of Agra see Fergusson's History of Architecture; Cities of India (1903) by G. W. Forest; Enchanted India (1899), by Prince Bojidar Karageorgevitch; and E. B. Havelln, Handbook to Agra and the Taj (1904).

AGRA CANAL, an important Indian irrigation work, available also for navigation, in Delhi, Gurgaon, Muttra and Agra districts, and Bharatpur state. The canal receives its water from the Jumna river at Okia, about 10 m. below Delhi. The weir across the Jumna was the first attempted in Upper India upon a foundation of fine sand; it is about 800 yds. long, and rises 7 ft. above the summer level of the river. From Okla the canal follows the high land between the Khari-nadi and the Jumna, and finally joins the Banganga river about 20 m. below Agra. Navigable branches connect the canal with Muttra and Agra. It was opened in 1874.

AGRAM (Hungarian Zagrab, Croatian Zagreb), the capital of Croatia-Slavonia, and a royal free town of Hungary; pleasantly situated between the north bank of the Save and the mountains which culminate in Sljeme (3396 ft.); 187 m. by rail S. of Vienna. Pop. (1890) 38,742; (1900) 57,930, or with garrison 61,002. Agram is the seat of the ban, or viceroy, of Croatia-Slavonia, of the Banal and Septemviral courts, the highest in the land, and of a chamber of commerce. It is also the meeting-place of the parliament; but local affairs are conducted by a municipal council. The city is divided into three districts. The Kapitel-Stadt, sometimes called the Bishop's Town, with the palace of the Roman Catholic archbishop, and his late Gothic cathedral, dating from the 15th century, lies eastward of the Medvescak, a brook which flows into the Save. The Upper Town, on high ground west of the Medvescak, contains the palace of the ban and the natural history museum. On the south, the Lower Town is separated from the other districts by the Inca, a long street traversed by a cable tramway. In it are the business and industrial quarters; the palace of justice; the academy of science, with picture-galleries, a library and a collection of antiquities; the theatre; the Franz Josef University, founded in 1874 to teach theology, law and philosophy; the synagogue; and the only Protestant church existing in the country at the beginning of the 20th century. Roman Catholic churches and schools are numerous. Besides the large Maximir park and botanical gardens, many of the squares are planted with trees and adorned with statues; while the whole city is surrounded by vineyards and country houses. Tobacco, leather, linen, carpets and war-material are manufactured in Agram, which also contains the works of the Hungarian state railways, and has a brisk trade in grain, wine, potash, honey, silk and porcelain.

In 1094 Agram was founded by Ladislaus I. of Hungary, as the seat of a bishop; and on the expulsion of its Mongol colony, in 1242, it was raised to the rank of a royal free city. For centuries a bitter feud raged between the Kapitel-Stadt and the Upper Town, until these rivals were forced to join hands against the Turks. Agram, already the political centre of Croatia-Slavonia, was selected as the capital in 1867. It suffered severely from earthquake in 1880 and 1901.

AGRAPHA (i.e. ``unwritten''), the name given to certain utterances ascribed, with some degree of certainty, to Jesus, which have been preserved in documents other than the Gospels, e.g. Acts xx. 35; 1 Tim. v. 18; 1 Cor. vii. 10-12, and the Logia (q.v.) discovered in 1897 and 1903 at Oxyrhyncus. Two interesting examples of such sayings may be quoted: (1) ``That which is weak shall be saved by that which is strong''; (2) ``Jesus, on whom be peace, has said: `The world is merely a bridge; ye are to pass over it, and not to build your dwellings upon it.''' The first of these is from the Apostolic Canons (c. A.D. 300), the second was found by the missionary Alexander Duff inscribed in Arabic on the gateway of the mosque at Fatehpur Sikri.

The earliest modern collection of such sayings was by Cotelerius, Ecclesiae Graecae Monumenta (1677-1688), followed by J. E. Grabe, Spicelegium (1698 and 1700), and J. B. Fabricius, Codex Apocryph. N. T. (2nd ed., 1719). See also A. Resch, Agrapha (Leipzig, 1889); J. H. Ropes, Die Spruche Jesu (Leipzig, 1896); and the article ``Sayings'' in J. Hastings' Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels.

AGRARIAN LAWS (Lat. ager, land). Under this heading we deal with the disposal of the public land (ager publicus) of ancient Rome. It was a principle of the Republican constitution that no gratuitous disposition of state property should be made without the consent of the people. Hence many of the ordinances affecting the public land were laws (leges) in the strictest sense of that word. It is, however, both justifiable and convenient to consider in this article all the regulations that were made for the administration of the public land by the executive authorities, as well as by the people during the Republic, and by the commands of the emperor, which had the force of law during the Principate.

The existence of public land, first in Italy, and then in the Mediterranean world, was the outcome of two ideas which are very familiar to students of antiquity. This land was the prize of conquest and was one of the means of defraying the current expenses of state-administration. For the latter purpose land is often leased or allowed to be occupied on the condition of the payment of dues. But it may be made to fulfil another purpose as well--this purpose being the satisfaction of the individual needs of poorer citizens. To meet this object the land is usually assigned, and on assignment generally ceases to be the property of the state. But it often happens that the state is not wholly disinterested in undertaking such acts of assignment. It gains security and territorial control by planting garrisons in conquered country, and it relieves itself of the necessity of providing for its poorer classes whether by state-aid or by a hazardous tampering with the rights of private property. In this use to which public land could be turned we see at once the connexion between agrarian legislation and colonization--a connexion which was so close that when a Roman spoke of an agrarian law he seems generally to have understood by it a law establishing a colony--and also the two aspects of colonization, the military and the social. These two objects were indissolubly connected throughout the whole of the earlier period of Roman agrarian assignation. They only became separated in the period subsequent to the Gracchi in so far as social motives still continued to be operative when military precautions had ceased to be necessary. It is probable that one of the chief motives which prompted infant Rome to war with her neighbours was the land-hunger of her citizens. This hunger she satisfied after conquest by annexing a portion of the enemy's territory. The amount thus confiscated varied from time to time. It was usually a third, but sometimes a half or even two-thirds, and after the fall of Capua in the Second Punic War the whole territory of the state was annexed. It is possible that by the close of the 2nd century B.C. one-half of the land of Italy belonged to Rome whether in private ownership or as the property of the state. Annexation was carried on in the provinces on a relatively smaller scale: but Rome retained as domain-land much of the territory of communities which had been destroyed, such as Carthage and Corinth, and the estates of former kings, such as the lands of the Attalids in the Chersonese. Other domains in Sicily and Greece, such as the territory of Leontini in the former, or Oropus in the latter case, are also found. This peculiar property of the Roman state in the provinces must be carefully distinguished from the general overlordship which Rome was supposed to hold over all provincial soil, expressed in the statement that provincials had only possession or usufruct of their land (Gaius ii. 7; Gromatici, p. 36, Lachmann). This overlordship was probably merely a legal fiction by which the juristic mind assigned a reason for the fact that the provincials paid a land tax from which Italians were exempt.

Such portions of the territories of conquered cities as were not claimed by Rome were as a matter of course left in the undisturbed possession of these cities. If the city was a federate state (civitas foederata), his possession was guaranteed by a treaty; if it was a free city, the guarantee was made by charter; if it was neither federate nor free, the abandonment of the territory by Rome must have been taken as a sufficient guarantee of the city's right to possess, although statements relative to the surrender may have been contained in the charter of the province (lex provinciae) to which the city belonged. But, whether the states were federate, free or stipendiary, there was only one case in which it was important to specify precisely that land had been restored (redditus) to its former occupants. This was the case where Rome had marked out a territory for assignment to her own citizens, but where in or near the limits of the assignment some of the land had been left in the hands or its former proprietors. Such land was noted in the state registers as redditus veteri possessori. Sometimes it was found that such an ancient possessor owned pieces of land separated from one another. In such cases an exchange might be effected between him and some other possessor, so that his possessions might be continuous. The fact of such an exchange was symbolized in the registers by the entry of land redditus et commutatus pro suo.

When the claims of earlier owners had been satisfied, the state proceeded to deal with such land as it retained. It dealt with it in two ways. It either alienated it, whether in exchange for a price or gratuitously; or it kept it as a source of revenue, whether on a system of lease or on some system of remunerative occupation. We may first consider the cases in which the state decided to alienate. The land might be sold for the benefit of the treasury. Typical instances of this treatment are furnished by the sale of some Campanian land during the Second Punic War (Livy xxviii. 46, xxxii. 7). The censors may have directed the sale, but it was executed by the quaestors as the regular officials of the treasury. Hence such land was described as ager quaestorius. The land was sold in definitely marked out plots, and we must suppose that, as a rule, when this sale had been effected, the lots fell under the absolute ownership of their purchasers. Yet there was some period of Roman history when this ownership was (at least in certain cases) conditioned. The Roman writers on agriculture speak of conditions and their neglect (Gromatici, p. 115). The conditions were probably those of military service or frontier defence. The epoch of history at which this conditioned ownership was recognized cannot be determined. It is a form of tenure that would be equally appropriate to the needs of the earliest period of Roman history and to those of imperial times.

The second mode of alienation was that by assignation. Lands thus assigned were known as agri dati assignati. The gift on the part of the state was gratuitous, and ownership passed wholly to the assignee. The land so given was definitely surveyed, marked out and registered. Such an assignment might take one of two possible forms. It might be the means of establishing a new ``plantation'' (colonia), with some independent political organization of its own, however slight--a settlement, therefore, which could be thought of as an entity separate from the city of Rome and from any other municipality. Or it might be the means of providing allotments for individuals who remained domiciled at Rome or continued to be members of some already existing municipality. It has been frequently held in modern times that this latter method of assignment is the one which our ancient authorities describe as assignment to individuals (viritim), and that the antithesis lies between the ``colonial'' and the ``viritane'' method of distribution. It is true that the passages which speak of the latter mode of assignation need not, and perhaps cannot, be interpreted as presenting the antithesis (Varro, de Re Rustica, i. 2. 7, i. 10. 2; Livy iv. 48, v. 24; Festus, p. 373; Gromatici, pp. 154, 160); yet it is not improbable that the antithesis is latent in this specific use of the term. It seems clear that the idea of assignation to, and, therefore, of ownership by, individuals must originally have been developed in contrast to the idea of ownership by some larger group (see ROMAN LAW). When the stage of individual ownership was reached, all assignation was ``viritane,'' but only some assignation was ``colonial.'' ``Viritane'' was, therefore, the wider term which would cover, and may sometimes have been used specially to denote, the system of non-colonial assignment. The amount granted to individuals in assignments of both types varied from time to time. It was reckoned in terms of the jugerum, which was approximately 5/8 of an English acre. The earliest and smallest assignment was 2 jugera--an amount so small that it seems to presuppose on the part of the recipient some share in common or gentile property or some additional private property of his own. Other quotas were 3, 3 7/12, 7, 10 + 14 jugera. The last was the maximum amount granted before the time of Ti. Gracchus (133 B.C.), and it was held by representatives of the old school that 7 jugera were as much as any frugal Roman should want (Pliny, Historia Naturalis, xviii. 18). The division was carried out by commissions of 3, 5 or 10 men appointed by the people (Cicero, de Lege Agraria ii. 7. 17). The land which the state retained as ager publicus was always placed in the hands of individuals, who occupied it in some manner remunerative to the state. These individuals (possessores) were never regarded as owners of the land thus occupied. It remained the property of the state, was held without a contract (precario) and could be resumed by the state at will. But though the possessors had no claim against the state, their ownership could be defended against all other individual claimants; and it seems probable that from an early date the praetor's possessory interdict was used to protect all occupiers, provided their tenure had been acquired neither by force (vi) nor by seizure of land in its occupiers, absence (clam), nor by mere permission of the previous holder to occupy (precario alter ab altero.) Moreover, Appian says that possessors of this type could transfer their land by inheritance, and that the land was accepted as security by creditors. This kind of occupation, therefore, though clearly distinguished from ownership (dominium), was yet regarded as a perfectly secure form of tenure. All occupiers of public land paid dues to the state through a state contractor (publicanus.) These dues varied in amount, and in the method of their collection. We learn from Appian that the ordinary dues paid by occupiers of arable land in Italy were 1/10 of seed crops and 1/5 of plant produce. Owners who turned cattle or sheep on pasture land belonging to the state also paid fixed dues to the treasury. The occupiers of the Roman public land in Campania paid a large rent (Cic. de leg. Agr. i. 7. 21). Appian's account of the public land (Bell. Civ. i. 7) would lead us to suppose that the amount of tax paid by the occupier, and the method adopted by the state for the collection of the revenues, depended upon the nature of the land at the time when it first passed to a possessor. He says that some of the public land which was in a good state of cultivation was let on lease; but that with regard to the poor or devastated land proclamation was made that anyone might squat on it and till it in return for the small payment in kind mentioned above. It has been questioned whether the land described by Appian and by Cicero as let on lease, of which the Campanian land and some lands in Sicily are typical, represents a legally distinct class. It seems probable that the distinction is one of practice rather than of law, and that the difference lay not in the relation between the state and the possessor (as would be the case if the leased land were really let to individuals by the censor, while the occupied land was held by mere permission of the state without any contract) but in the details of the contract between the censor and the publicanus with regard to the collection of the dues. The conditions of the tenure of the Roman public land in Africa are known to us from the Lex Agraria of 111 B.C. (Bruns, Fontes, i. 3. 11, vv. 85 foll.). Here the publicanus is the middleman between the state and the possessor, and purchases from the censor the right of collecting dues. The law places no restriction on bargaining between the censor and the publicanus, but enacts that no possessor or pastor shall ever be required by the publicanus to pay more than the amount prescribed by the censors of 115 B.C. These conditions may be regarded as typical for the occupation of public lands. And when Cicero speaks of public land as let on lease (locatus) by the censor, he no doubt refers to the farming of the taxes to a publicanus for a fixed period, and not to the letting of the land. This seems clear from a passage (in Verr. iii. 6. 12) where he speaks of land in Sicily which had been restored by Rome to former owners as being leased. The land itself could not be leased by Rome if it belonged not to Rome but to the Sicilian inhabitants; but the collection of the revenues due to Rome could be so leased to Publicani (q.v..) And the same explanation would apply to Cicero's statements that the Campanian land was let on lease by the censors (cf. Festus, s.v. venditiones.) The view that there was a distinct class of the public land which was let out for a fixed term of years to tenants on a definite lease, unlike the ordinary public land which was always held in occupation merely at will (precario), has been maintained by W. A. Becker, and seems to be supported, with the help of conjecture, by a few passages in Cicero and by Hyginus (Gromatici, p. 116). But the passage of Hyginus is barely intelligible even on this supposition; and Cicero's repeated statement that the Campanian land was expressly exempted from the legislation of the Gracchi (cf. Lex Agraria, Bruns, loc. cit. v. 6) shows that there was not sufficient distinction between the Campanian tenure and that of other public land in Italy to make this definite exception by name superfluous. The Sempronian law could obviously not touch land which the state had leased to occupiers on the basis of a definite contract. Moreover, we have absolutely no evidence for such a contract, even in Cicero's speeches against Rullus, when he might be expected to mention it as an objection to Rullus's bill. That there were some distinctive characteristics about the tenure of certain lands, of which the Campanian land is typical, seems proved by the repeated association of these lands with certain special lands in the provinces, especially at Leontini in Sicily, and by some passages in the Gromatici where agri vectigales are spoken of as a distinct class. But what these characteristics were cannot be clearly determined. It seems certain that in every case the possessor occupied precario, and that only in the bargain between the censor and the middleman was there room for contract. Thus the state was justified in the claim to resume public land which it made in many of the Agrarian laws.

The earliest agrarian measures of which we have any record are the distributions of land conquered in war to poor citizens, which later authorities attribute to Numa and Servius Tullius. Such assignments, however, are not the result of legislative acts, but of a voluntary surrender on the king's part of his own portion of the spoils. It is probable that the agrarian law which resulted from the proposals of Spurius Cassius (consul 486 B.C.) was the first attempt made by the Roman people to exercise its control over the occupation of state territory. According to the traditional account, Cassius proposed that such portion of lands lately conquered from the Hernici as fell to the Roman state should be divided in equal shares between the Roman plebs and the Latins; and further that poor citizens should receive allotments of land previously conquered, and occupied without any legal right by the Patricians. The inclusion of the Latins in the distribution was afterwards dropped; but the law in its final form certainly asserted the right of the Plebeians to take their share in the public land. The accounts given of it by Livy and Dionysius are no doubt coloured by their knowledge of later agrarian legislation, and it seems hardly likely that the proposal to resume and redistribute public land already occupied was made at this early stage; but it probably challenged the exclusive claim of Patricians to occupy. We hear of another agrarian law proposed by the tribune Lucius Icilius in 456 B.C. (Lex Icilia de Aventino publicando) which regulated in some way the tenure of public land on the Aventine. In 376 B.C. the tribunes Licinius and Sextius introduced into their laws, for the promotion of the privileges of the plebs, a clause enacting that no more than 500 jugera of land should be occupied by a single cultivator. It seems almost certain from Livy's account that this measure referred only to the occupation of ager publicus, though some modern authorities have upheld the view that it dealt with land held on any kind of tenure, others again that it dealtonlywith private property in land. According to Appian, the law also enacted that only 100 cattle and 500 sheep might be turned by one owner on the public pastures. But it failed of its object because it did not provide any adequate machinery for the resumption by the state of land held in excess of the prescribed amount, and was therefore easily evaded. The next agrarian law we hear of was a more special measure dealing with lands conquered from the Senones and Picentines. In 232 B.C. C. Flaminius, then tribune of the plebs, proposed to resume these lands for the state, although they were already occupied by large landholders, and to distribute them in allotments to poor citizens. The measure met with much opposition from the richer classes, and did not gain the sanction of the senate; but C. Flaminius ignored constitutional usage and brought it direct before the council of the plebs, by which it was made law. In 133 B.C. the tribune Tiberius Gracchus (q.v.) re-enacted the earlier measure of Licinius and Sextius, with the additional provisions that each owner might occupy 250 jugera for each son, in addition to the original 500, and that a commission of three (iii. viri agris dandis adsignandis) should be appointed to carry out the terms of the law. He also enacted that the land occupied in excess of the prescribed amount, and on that account resumed for the state by the land commission, should be distributed in inalienable lots to poor citizens. Subsequent modifications of those provisions which dealt with the powers of the land commission led to a re-enactment of the whole by C. Gracchus, the brother of Tiberius, tribune in 123 B.C. But within 15 years from the tribunate of C. Gracchus the whole of his law had been rendered null by three further enactments. The first of these permitted the sale of land allotted under the law, which thus tended to return into the hands of its former occupiers as private property, which the state had no longer any right to resume. The second abolished the commission appointed to carry out the terms of the law, thus putting a stop to further resumption and distribution, and also transformed existing occupiers into owners of the land they occupied, paying only a small due to the treasury. The third (probably the surviving Lex Agraria, Bruns, loc. cit.) abolished the payment. This law belongs to the year 111 B.C. The dates of the two former laws are uncertain, but it is probable that the first was passed in 121, the second in 119 or 118. From this time forward a change comes over land legislation. The ordinary public land in Italy, in the hands of occupiers, which had given rise to all the agrarian legislation between 376 and 111, had practically ceased to exist. The Campanian land still remained, but the same reasons which led to its exemption from the Gracchan legislation seem to have continued to protect its holders until 63 B.C. In the meantime several agrarian laws were passed which provided for the distribution of land placed in some other way at the disposal of the state. In 100 B.C. Appuleius Saturninus (q.v.), tribune of the plebs, proposed the allotment of lands recently taken from the Cimbri in Gaul. This law was passed, but eventually declared null by the senate, with the rest of Saturninus's laws. A more dangerous precedent was set by Sulla in his dictatorship (82-81 B.C..) He was the first to confiscate the lands of his political foes, and of communities which had resisted him, and treating them as ager publicus, assign them to his veterans as a prize. This example was followed by Octavian (Augustus) and Antony (M. Antonius) after their proscriptions in 43 B.C. A third method of providing land for distribution was that adopted by Servilius Rullus (q.v.) in 63 B.C. His bill enacted that land should be purchased in Italy with money gained by the sale of Roman territories abroad, and allotted to citizens. A commission of ten (x. viri agris dandis adsignandis), annually elected by 9 out of the 35 tribes, was to carry out the terms of the law. Rullus also ventured to propose the distribution of the Campanian land, which had hitherto been respected by all agrarian reformers. It was chiefly on this ground that Cicero in his three speeches on the Agrarian law succeeded in exciting such a general feeling against it that it was eventually withdrawn. In 60 B.C. the tribune L. Flavius brought forward a bill for the distribution of lands to Pompey's veterans. The Campanian land was certainly to be included in the distribution, and it is clear from Cicero that the bill in some way dealt violently with the rights of private owners. It also, however, enacted that land should be purchased by the state with the wealth which Pompey's conquests had brought into the treasury. The last proposal was supported by Cicero, but the bill seems to have been dropped, only to reappear in more moderate form in the following year. A consular bill, the lex Julia Campana, was passed by Julius Caesar in 59 B.C., which provided for the settlement of Pompey's veterans on the Campanian land, and other lands purchased by the state from private owners in Italy with the full consent of the latter. In its original form, the bill omitted all reference to the Campanian land, which seems to have been included by Caesar in the distribution only when the continued and unreasoning opposition of the senate had goaded him to extreme measures. A commission of twenty was to be appointed to carry out the law, from which Caesar himself was expressly excluded. This measure finally settled the question of the Campanian land, which now passed out of the category of ager publicus. The last agrarian law of the republic was that passed in 44 B.C. on the proposal of the consul M. Antonius, or of his brother L. Antonius. We have no detailed account of the measure, but it seems to have provided grants of land for veterans, and was to be administered by seven commissioners. The law was afterwards cancelled by decree of the senate, probably on the ground of some technical flaw. The emperor Vespasian attempted to reclaim for the state small oddments of land (subseciva) which were held by neighbouring owners to whom they had never been definitely assigned. The attempt met with violent opposition, and though resumed by Titus, was finally crushed by Domitian, who issued an edict recognizing all oddments of land thus held to be private property.

AUTHORITIES.--Niebuhr, History of Rome (English translation), ii. p. 129 foll. (Cambridge, 1832); Becker, Handbuch der romischen Alterthumer, iii. 2, p. 142 (Leipzig, 1843); Marquardt, Romische Staatsverwaltung, i. p. 96 foll. (Leipzig, 1881); Madvig, Verfassung und Verwaltung des romischen Staates, ii. p. 364 foll. (Leipzig, 1882), (See also ROME, History.) (A. H. J. G; A. M. CL.)

AGREDA, MARIA FERNANDEZ CORONEL, ABBESS OF, known in religion as Sor (Sister) Maria de Jesus (1602-1665), was the daughter of Don Francisco Coronel and of his wife Catalina de Arana. She was born at Agreda, on the borders of Navarre and Aragon, on the 2nd of April 1602. All her family were powerfully influenced by the ecstatic piety of Spain in that age. Her biographer, Samaniego, records that even as an infant in arms she was filled with divine knowledge. Her stupidity as a child is piously accounted for by extreme humility. From childhood she was favoured by ecstasies and visions. When she was fifteen the whole family entered religion. The father, now an old man, and the two sons entered the Franciscan house of San Antonio de Nalda. Maria, her mother and sister established a Franciscan nunnery in the family house at Agreda, which, when Maria's reputation had extended, was replaced by the existing building. She began it with one hundred reals (one pound sterling) lent her by a devotee, and it was completed in fourteen years by voluntary gifts. Much against her own wish, we are told, she was appointed abbess at the age of twenty-five. In 1668, four years after her death, the Franciscans published a story that at the age of twenty-two she had been miraculously conveyed to Mexico, to convert a native people, and had made five hundred journeys through the air for that purpose in one year. Though the rule required the abbess to be changed every three years, Maria remained the effective ruler of Agreda till her death. The Virgin was declared abbess, and Maria acted as her locus tenens. In her later years she inclined to the ``internal prayer,'' and neglect of the outward offices of the church, which was usual with the ``alumbrados'' or Quietists. The Inquisition took notice of her, but she was not proceeded against with severity. Maria's importance in religion and Spanish history is based on two grounds. In the earlier part of her life, while the Franciscan, Francisco Andres de la Torre, was her confessor, she wrote an Introduction to the History of the Most Blessed Virgin. It was destroyed by the direction of another confessor. Later on, by the order of her superiors, and under the guidance of her Franciscan confessor, Andres de Fuen Mayor, she wrote The Mystic City of God. It is an extraordinary book, full of apocryphal history, visions and scholasticism, which professes to have been written by divine inspiration, and is devoted to praise of the Virgin. In 1642 she sent to Philip IV. an account of a vision she had had, of a council of the infernal powers for the destruction of Catholicism and Spain. The king visited her when on his way to Aragon to suppress the rebellion of Catalonia. A long correspondence, which lasted till her death on the 29th of March 1665, was begun. The king folded a sheet of paper down the middle and wrote on the one side of the division. The answers were to be written on the other and the sheet returned. By a pious fraud copies were kept at Agreda. How far Maria was only the mouthpiece of the Franciscans must of course be a matter of doubt. Her correspondence was apparently suspended whenever her confessor was absent. She must, however, have co-operated at least, and it is certain that the Franciscans, who were very unfortunate in some of their pious women, owed not a little to her. The letters are in excellent Spanish, are curious reading, and are invaluable as illustrations for the second part of the reign of Philip IV.

The correspondence of Sor Maria with the king has been published in full by Don F. Siluela, Cartas de la Venerable Madre Sor Maria de Agreda y del Senor Rey Don Filipe IV. (Madrid, 1885). The Mystic City of God is one of the most characteristic monuments of Mariolatry, and has continued to be much in favour with supporters of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception. It appeared in Madrid in 1668, with a biographical introduction by Samaniego, has been often reprinted, and was translated into French and Italian. It was for a time reserved by the Index, both Spanish and Papal, but was taken off by the influence of the Franciscans and of Spain, the chief supporters of the immaculate Conception. An account of Maria de Agreda will be found in the Tracts of Michael Geddes (London, 1706),vol. iii., written by a competent critic and Anglican divine of the 18th century who detested ``enthusiasm.'' (D. H.)

AGRICOLA, CHRISTOPH LUDWIG (1667-1719), German landscape painter, was born and died at Regensburg (Ratisbon). He spent a great part of his life in travel, visiting England, Holland and France, and residing for a considerable period at Naples. His numerous landscapes, chiefly cabinet pictures, are remarkable for fidelity to nature, and especially for their skilful representation of varied phases of climate. In composition his style shows the influence of Caspar Poussin, while in light and colour he imitates Claude Lorraine. His pictures are to be found in Dresden, Brunswick, Vienna, Florence, Naples and many other towns of both Germany and Italy.

AGRICOLA (the Latinized form of the name BAUER), GEORG (1490-1555), German scholar and man of science, known as ``the father of mineralogy,'' was born at Glauchau in Saxony on the 24th of March 1490. Gifted with a precocious intellect, he early threw himself into the pursuit of the ``new learning,'' with such effect that at the age of twenty he was appointed Rector extraordinarius of Greek at the so-called Great School of Zwickau, and made his appearance as a writer on philology. After two years he gave up his appointment in order to pursue his studies at Leipzig, where, as rector, he received the powerful support of the professor of classics, Peter Mosellanus (1493-1524), a celebrated humanist of the time, with whom he had already been in correspondence. Here he also devoted himself to the study of medicine, physics and chemistry. After the death of Mosellanus he went for a short time to Italy, where he took his doctor's degree. On his return he settled as practising physician in the Joachimstal, a centre of mining and smelting works, his object being partly ``to fill in the gaps in the art of healing,'' partly to test what had been written about mineralogy by careful observation of ores and the methods of their treatment. His thorough grounding in philology and philosophy had accustomed him to systematic thinking, and this enabled him to construct out of his studies and observations of minerals a logical system which he began to publish in 1528. Bermannus, sive de re metallica dialogus, the first attempt to reduce to scientific order the knowledge won by practical work, brought Agricola into notice. In 1530 Prince Maurice of Saxony appointed him historiographer with an annual allowance, and he migrated to Chemnitz, the centre of the mining industry, in order to widen the range of his observations. The citizens showed their appreciation of his learning by appointing him town physician and electing him burgomaster. His popularity was, however, short-lived. Chemnitz was a violent centre of the Protestant movement, while Agricola never wavered in his allegiance to the old religion; and he was forced to resign his office. He now lived apart from the contentious movements of the time, devoting himself wholly to learning. His chief interest was still in mineralogy; but he occupied himself also with medical, mathematical, theological and historical subjects, his chief historical work being the Dominatores Saxonici a prima origine ad hanc aetatem, published at Freiberg. In 1544 he published the De ortu et causis subterraneorum, in which he laid the first foundations of a physical geology, and criticized the theories of the ancients. In 1545 followed the De natura eorum quae effluunt e terra; in 1546 the De veteribus et novis metallis, a comprehensive account of the discovery and occurrence of minerals; in 1548 the De animantibus subterraneis; and in the two following years a number of smaller works on the metals. His most famous work, the De re metallica, libri xii., was published in 1556, though apparently finished several years before, since the dedication to the elector and his brother is dated 1550. It is a complete and systematic treatise on mining and metallurgy, illustrated with many fine and interesting woodcuts and containing, in an appendix, the German equivalents for the technical terms used in the Latin text. It long remained a standard work, and marks its author as one of the most accomplished chemists of his time. Believing the black rock of the Schlossberg at Stolpen to be the same as Pliny's basalt, he applied this name to it, and thus originated a petrological term which has been permanently incorporated in the vocabulary of science.

In spite of the early proof that Agricola had given of the tolerance of his own religious attitude, he was not suffered to end his days in peace. He remained to the end a staunch Catholic, though all Chemnitz had gone over to the Lutheran creed; and it is said that his life was ended by a fit of apoplexy brought on by a heated discussion with a Protestant divine. He died at Chemnitz on the 21st of November 1555, and so violent was the theological feeling against him, that he was not suffered to rest in the town to which he had added lustre. Amidst hostile demonstrations he was carried to Zeitz, seven miles from Chemnitz, and there buried.

See article by Gumbel in Allgem. Deutsche Biog. (1875); F. L. Becher, Georg Agricola und Werner (Freiberg, 1819); F. A. Schmidt, Georg Agricola's Bermannus mit Einleitung (Freiberg, 1806); Poggendorff, Biographisches Handworterbuch; Agricola's works passim.

AGRICOLA, GNAEUS JULIUS (A.D. 37-93), Roman statesman and general, father-in-law of the historian Tacitus, was born on the 13th of June A.D. 37 (according to others, 39) at Forum Julii (Frejus) in Gallia Narbonensis. His father, Julius Graecinus, having been put to death by Caligula, Agricola was brought up by his mother Julia Procilla. After studying philosophy at Massilia, he entered the army and served (59) under Suetonius Paulinus in Britain. In 61 he returned to Rome, where he married Domitia Decidiana, a Roman lady of distinction. In 63 he was quaestor in Asia, in 65 tribune, in 68 praetor, and when Vespasian was proclaimed emperor, he immediately declared himself his supporter. In 70 he was appointed to the command of the 20th legion in Britain, then stationed at Deva (Chester). On his return to Rome at the end of three years he was made censor, raised to the rank of patrician, and appointed governor of Aquitania (74-78). Appointed consul suffectus in the following year, he was admitted into the college of pontiffs and made governor of Britain. In the same year he betrothed his daughter to Tacitus. Although the legation of Britain lasted as a rule only three years, Agricola held the post for at least seven and succeeded in reconciling the inhabitants to Roman rule and inducing them to adopt the customs and civilization of their conquerors. His military achievements were equally brilliant. After conquering the Ordovices in North Wales and the island of Mona (Anglesey), during the next two years he carried his victorious arms to the Taus (Tay; others read Tanaus, perhaps the north Tyne), and in his fourth campaign fortified the country between Clota and Bodotria (the firths of Clyde and Forth) as a protection against the attacks of the Caledonians. Having explored the coasts of Fife and Forfar, he gained a decisive victory over the Caledonians under Galgacus at the Graupian hill (see BRITAIN, Roman.) His successes, however, had aroused the envy and suspicion of Domitian. He was recalled to Rome, where he lived a life of studied retirement, to avoid the possibility of giving offence to the tyrant. He died in 93, poisoned, it was rumoured, by the emperor's orders. The Life of Agricola by his son-in-law Tacitus is practically a panegyric or funeral oration.

See Urlichs, De Vita et Honoribus Agricolae (1868); Dio Cassius xxxix. 50, lxvi. 20: Mommsen, Provinces of the Roman Empire (Eng. trans., 1886), i. 183-184, 194.

AGRICOLA, JOHANN FRIEDRICH (1720-1774), German musician, was born at Dobitschen in Saxe-Altenburg, on the 4th of January 1720. While a student of law at Leipzig he studied music under Johann Sebastian Bach. In 1741 he went to Berlin, where he studied musical composition. He was soon generally recognized as one of the most skilful organists of his time; and in 1751, as the result of a comic opera, Il Filosofo convinto in amore, performed at Potsdam, he was made court composer to Frederick the Great. He died in Berlin on the 1st of December 1774. In 1759, on the death of Karl Heinrich Graun, he was appointed conductor of the royal orchestra. Besides several operas of merit, he composed instrumental pieces and church music. His reputation chiefly rests, however, on his theoretical and critical writings on musical subjects. He wrote under the pseudonym of Flavio Anicio Olibrio.

AGRICOLA (originally SCHNEIDER, then SCHNITTER), JOHANNES (1494-1566), German Protestant reformer, was born on the 20th of April 1494, at Eisleben, whence he is sometimes called Magister Islebius. He studied at Wittenberg, where he soon gained the friendship of Luther. In 1519 he accompanied Luther to the great assembly of German divines at Leipzig, and acted as recording secretary. After teaching for some time in Wittenberg, he went to Frankfort in 1525 to establish the reformed mode of worship. He had resided there only a month when he was called to Eisleben, where he remained till 1526 as teacher in the school of St Andrew, and preacher in the Nicolai church. In 1536 he was recalled to teach in Wittenberg, and was welcomed by Luther. Almost immediately, however, a controversy, which had been begun ten years before and been temporarily silenced, broke out more violently than ever. Agricola was the first to teach the views which Luther was the first to stigmatize by the now well-known name Antinomian (q.v.), maintaining that while the unregenerate were still under the Mosaic law, Christians were entirely free from it, being under the gospel alone. In consequence of the bitter controversy with Luther that resulted, Agricola in 1540 left Wittenberg secretly for Berlin, where he published a letter addressed to the elector of Saxony, which was generally interpreted as a recantation of his obnoxious views. Luther, however, seems not to have so accepted it, and Agricola remained at Berlin. The elector Joachim II. of Brandenburg, having taken him into his favour, appointed him court preacher and general superintendent. He held both offices until his death in 1566, and his career in Brandenburg was one of great activity and influence. Along with Julius von Pflug, bishop of Naumburg-Zeitz, and Michael Helding, titular bishop of Sidon. he prepared the Augsburg Interim of 1548. He endeavoured in vain to appease the Adiaphoristic controversy (see ADIAPHORISTS.) He died during an epidemic of plague on the 22nd of September 1566. Agricola wrote a number of theological works which are now of little interest. He was the first to make a collection of German proverbs which he illustrated with a commentary. The most complete edition, which contains seven hundred and fifty proverbs, is that published at Wittenberg in 1592; a modern one is that of Latendorf, 1862.

See Cordes, Joh. Agricola's Schriften moglichst verzeichnet (Altona, 1817); Life by G. Kawerau (1881), who also wrote the notice in Hauck-Herzog, Realencyk. fur prot. Theol., where other literature is cited.

AGRICOLA, MARTIN (c. 1500-1556), German musician, was born about 1500 in Lower Silesia. His German name was Sohr or Sore. From 1524 till his death he lived at Magdeburg, where he occupied the post of teacher or cantor in the Protestant school. The senator and music-printer Rhau, of Wittenberg, was a close friend of Agricola, whose theoretical works, providing valuable material concerning the change from the old to the new system of notation, he published. Agricola was also the first to harmonize in four parts Luther's chorale, Ein' feste Burg.

Four other Agricolas1 are known as composers between the end of the 15th century and the middle of the 17th.

In the 18th century we find Burney, in the course of his tour in Germany (1772), much impressed by JOHANN FRIEDRICH AGRICOLA (1720-1774), court composer and director of the royal chapel to Frederick the Great. This Agricola was a pupil of Bach, and a fine organist and clever writer on music, especially on operatic style, the problems of which were beginning to be raised by French writers-and composers in preparation for the work of Gluck.

AGRICOLA, RODOLPHUS (properly ROELOF HUYSMANN) (1443-1485), Dutch scholar, was born at Baflo, near Groningen, in 1443. He was educated at Louvain, where he graduated as master of arts. After residing for some time in Paris, he went in 1476 to Ferrara in Italy, and attended the lectures of the celebrated Theodorus Gaza (1400-1478) on the Greek language. Having visited Pavia and Rome, he returned to his native country about 1479, and was soon afterwards appointed syndic of Groningen. In 1482, on the invitation of Johann von Dalberg, bishop of Worms (1445-1503), whose friendship he had gained in Italy, he accepted a professorship at Heidelberg, and for three years delivered lectures there and at Worms on the literature of Greece and Rome. By his personal influence much more than by his writings he did much for the promotion of learning in Germany; and Erasmus and other critics of the generation immediately succeeding his own are full of his praises. In his opposition to the scholastic philosophy he in some degree anticipated the great intellectual revolution in which many of his pupils were conspicuous actors. He died at Heidelberg on the 28th of October 1485. His principal work is De inventione dialectica, libri iii., in which he attempts to change the scholastic philosophy of the day.

See T. F. Tresling, Vita et Merita Rudolphi Agricolae (Groningen, 1830); v. Bezold, R. Agricola (Munchen, 1884): and Ihm, Der Humanist R. Agricola, sein Leben und seine Schriften (Paderb., 1893).

AGRICULTURAL GANGS, groups of women, girls and boys organized by an independent gang-master, under whose supervision they execute agricultural piece-work for farmers in certain parts of England. They are sometimes called ``public gangs'' to distinguish them from ``private gangs'' consisting of workers engaged by the farmer himself, and undertaking work solely for him, under his own supervision or under that of one of his men. The system was for long prevalent in the counties of Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire, Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, and is still to be found in a much modified form in the fen district. The practice dates from the latter years of the reign of George III., when the low-lying, marshy lands surrounding the basin of the Wash were being rapidly drained and converted into rich alluvial districts. The unreformed condition of the poor-law, under which the support of the poor fell upon each individual parish, instead of a union of parishes, made landlords reluctant to erect cottages on the reclaimed land for the benefit of their tenants. Labour had to be obtained for the cultivation of these new lands, and that of women, girls and boys, being cheaper than the labour of men, was consequently very largely employed. The tendency to moral and physical ruin which resulted from this nomadic life was so great that an inquiry into the condition of agricultural child-labour was included in the reference to the commission on child-labour appointed in 1862, and the results were so startling that the Agricultural Gangs Act was passed in 1867, forbidding the employment of any child under eight years old, and of any female under a male gangmaster unless a female licensed to act as gang-mistress were also

1 Alexander, died 1506; Johann, flor. 1600; Wolfgang Christoph, flor. 1630; and George Ludwig, 1643-1676. present. Gang-masters must be licensed by two justices, and may not hold a liquor license. The distance to be traversed on foot is fixed by the justices, and the licenses must be renewed every six months. Later legislation made more stringent the regulations under which children are employed in agricultural gangs. By the Elementary Education Act 1876, repealing and re-enacting the principal provisions of the Agricultural (Children) Act 1873, no child shall be employed under the age of eleven years, and none between eleven years and thirteen years before the child has obtained a certificate of having reached the standard of education fixed by a by-law in force in the district.

AGRICULTURE (from Lat. ager, field, and colere, to cultivate), the science, art and industry of utilizing the soil so as to produce the means of human subsistence, embracing in its widest sense the rearing of live-stock as well as the raising of crops. The history of agriculture is the history of man in his most primitive, and most permanent aspect. Hence the nations of antiquity ascribed to it a divine origin; Brahma in Hindustan, Isis in Egypt, Demeter in Greece, and Ceres in Italy, were its founders. The simplest form of agriculture is that in which crops are raised from one patch of ground till it is exhausted, when it is allowed to go wild and abandoned for another. This ``extensive'' husbandry is found in combination with a nomadic or semi-nomadic and pastoral organization, such as that of the German tribes described by Caesar and Tacitus (see especially Germania, 26). The discovery of the uses of the bare fallow and of manure, by making it possible to raise crops from the same area for an indefinite period, marks a stage of progress. This ``intensive'' culture in a more or less developed form was practised by the great nations of antiquity, and little decided advance was made till after the middle ages. The introduction of new plants, which made it possible to dispense with the bare fallow, and still later the application to husbandry of scientific discoveries as to soils, plant constituents and manures, brought about a revolution in farming. But the progress of husbandry, evidenced by the production of larger and better crops with more certainty, is due to that rationalizing of agricultural practices which is the work of modern times. What before was done in the light of experience is nowadays done in the light of knowledge. Even the earliest forms of intensive cultivation demand the practice of the fundamental processes of husbandry--ploughing, manuring, sowing, weeding, reaping. It is the improvements in methods, implements and materials, brought about by the application of science, that distinguish the husbandry of the 20th century from that of medieval and ancient times.

Ancient Husbandry.--The monumental records of Egypt are the source of the earliest information on farming. The Egypt

Egypt.

of the Pharaohs was a country of great estates farmed either by tenants or by slaves or labourers under the superintendence of stewards. It owed its fertility to the Nile, which, inundating the land near its banks, was distributed by means of canals over more distant portions of its valley. The autumnal subsidence of the river was followed by shallow ploughing performed by oxen yoked to clumsy wooden ploughs, the clods being afterwards levelled with wooden hoes by hand. Next came the sowing, the seed being pressed into the soil by the feet of sheep which were driven over the fields. At harvest the corn was cut high on the stalk with short sickles and put up in sheaves, after which it was carried to the threshing-floor and there trodden out by the hoofs of oxen. Winnowing was done by women, who tossed the grain into the air with small wooden boards, the chaff being blown away by the winds. Wheat and barley were the chief crops, and another plant, perhaps identical with the durra, i.e. millet, of modern Egypt, was also cultivated. The latter, when ripe, was pulled up by the roots, and the grain was separated by means of an implement resembling a comb. To these crops may be added peas, beans and many herbs and esculent roots. Oxen were much prized, and breeding was carried on with a careful eye to selection. Immense numbers of ducks and geese were reared.

Diodorus Siculus, writing of later times, says that cattle were sent during a portion of each year to the marshy pastures of the delta, where they roamed under the care of herdsmen. They were fed with hay during the annual inundation, and at other times tethered in meadows of green clover. The flocks were shorn twice annually (a practice common to several Asiatic countries), and the ewes yeaned twice a year. (See also EGYPT.)

The agriculture of the region bordering the Tigris and Euphrates, like that of Egypt, depended largely on irrigation, and traces of ancient canals are still to be seen in Babylonia. But beyond the fact that both Babylonia and Assyria were large producers of cereals, little is known of their husbandry.

The nomads of the patriarchal ages, whilst mainly dependent upon their flocks and herds, practised also agriculture proper.

Biblical accounts among the Israelites.

The tracts over which they roamed were in ordinary circumstances common to all shepherds alike. During the summer they frequented the mountainous districts, and retired to the valleys to winter. Vast flocks of sheep and of goat constituted their wealth, although they also possessed oxen. When the last were abundant, it seems to be an indication that tillage was practised. Job, besides immense possessions in flocks and herds, had 500 yoke of oxen, which he employed in ploughing, and a ``very great husbandry.'' Isaac, too, conjoined tillage with pastoral husbandry, and that with success, for ``he sowed in the land Gerar, and reaped an hundred-fold''--a return which, it would appear, in some favoured regions, occasionally rewarded the labour of the husbandman. In the parable of the sower, Jesus Christ mentions an increase of thirty, sixty and an hundred fold.

Along with the Babylonians, Egyptians and Romans, the Israelites are classed as one of the great agricultural nations of antiquity. The Mosaic Institute contained an agrarian law, based upon an equal division of the soil amongst the adult males, a census of whom was taken just before their entrance into Canaan. Provision was thus made for 600,000 yeomen, assigning (according to different calculations) from sixteen to twenty-five acres of land to each. This land, held in direct tenure from Jehovah, their sovereign, was in theory inalienable. The accumulation of debt upon it was prevented by the prohibition of interest, the release of debts every seventh year, and the reversion of the land to the proprietor, or his heirs, at each return of the year of jubilee. The owners of these small farms cultivated them with much care, and rendered them highly productive. They were favoured with a soil extremely fertile, and one which their skill and diligence kept in good condition. The stones were carefully cleared from the fields, which were also watered from canals and conduits, communicating with the brooks and streams with which the country ``was well watered everywhere,'' and enriched by the application of manures. The seventh year's fallow prevented the exhaustion of the soil, which was further enriched by the burning of the weeds and spontaneous growth of the Sabbatical year. The crops chiefly cultivated were wheat, millet, barley, beans and lentils; to which it is supposed, on grounds not improbable, may be added rice and cotton. The chief implements were a wooden plough of simple and light construction, a hoe or mattock, and a light harrow. The ox and the ass were used for labour. The word ``oxen,'' which occurs in our version of the Scriptures, as well as in the Septuagint and Vulgate, denotes the species, rather than the sex. As the Hebrews did not mutilate any of their animals, bulls were in common use. The quantity of land ploughed by a yoke of oxen in one day was called a yoke or acre. Towards the end of October, with which month the rainy season begins, seedtime commenced, and of course does so still. The seedtime, begun in October, extends, for wheat and some other white crops, through November and December; and barley continues to be sown until about the middle of February. The seed appears to have been sometimes ploughed in, and at other times to have been covered by harrowing. The cold winds which prevail in January and February frequently injured the crops in the more exposed and higher districts. The rainy season extends from October to April, during which time refreshing showers fall, chiefly during the night, and generally at intervals of a few days. The harvest was earlier or later as the rains towards the end of the season were more or less copious. It, however, generally began in April, and continued through May for the different crops in succession. In the south, and in the plains, the harvest, as might be expected, commenced some weeks earlier than in the northern and mountainous districts. The slopes of the hills were carefully terraced and irrigated wherever practicable, and on these slopes the vine and olive were cultivated with great success. At the same time the hill districts and neighbouring deserts afforded pasturage for numerous flocks and herds, and thus admitted of the benefits of a mixed husbandry. Not by a figure of speech but literally, every Israelite sat under the shadow of his own vine and fig-tree; whilst the country as a whole is described (2 Kings xviii. 32) as ``a land of corn and wine, a land of bread and vineyards, a land Of oil olive and of honey.''

The earliest known forms of intensive husbandry were based chiefly upon the proximity of rivers and irrigation. The

Greece.

agriculture of classical ages was slightly more developed in so far as the husbandman of Greece and Rome was less likely to leave to nature the fertilization of the soil. Greece being a mountainous land was favourable to the culture of the vine rather than to that of cereals. Scanty information on its agriculture is to be derived from the Works and Days of Hesiod (about the 8th century B.C.), the Oeconomicus of Xenophon (4th century B.C.), the History o/ Plants and the Origin o/. Plants of Theophrastus (4th century B.C..)The latter is the first writer on botany, and his works also contain interesting remarks on manures, the mixing of soils and other agricultural topics (see also GEOPONICI.) Greek husbandry had no salient characteristics. The summer fallow with repeated ploughing was its basis. The young crop was hoed, reaping was performed with a sickle, and a high stubble left on the ground as manure. The methods of threshing and winnowing were the same as those in use in ancient Egypt. Wheat, barley and spelt were the leading crops. Meadows were pastured rather than mown. Attica was famous for its olives and figs, but general agriculture excelled in Peloponnesus, where, by means of irrigation and drainage, all the available land was utilized.

In the early days of the Roman republic land in Italy was held largely by small proprietors, and agriculture was highly esteemed

Rome.

and classed with war as an occupation becoming a free man. The story of Cincinnatus, twice summoned from the plough to the highest offices in the state, illustrates the status of the Roman husbandman. The later tendency was towards the absorption of smaller holdings into large estates. As wealth increased the peasant-farmer gave way before the large landowner, who cultivated his property by means of slave-labour, superintended by slave-bailiffs. The low price of grain, which was imported in huge quantities from Sicily and other Roman provinces, operated to crush the small holder, at the same time as it made arable farming unremunerative. Sheep-raising, involving larger holdings, less supervision and less labour, was preferred by the capitalist land-holder to the cultivation of the wheat, spelt, vines or olives which were the chief crops of the country. Lupine, beans, peas and vetches were grown for fodder, and meadows, often artificially watered, supplied hay. Swine and poultry were used for food to a greater extent than oxen, which were bred chiefly for ploughing. The following epitome of Virgil's advice to the husbandman in the first book of the Georgics suggests the outline of Roman husbandry: ``First learn the peculiarities of your soil and climate. Plough the fallow in early spring, and plough frequently--twice in winter, twice in summer unless your land is poor, when a light ploughing in September will do. Either let the land lie fallow every other year or else let spelt follow pulse, vetches or lupine. Repetition of one crop exhausts the ground; rotation will lighten the strain, only the exhausted soil must be copiously dressed with manure or ashes. It often does good to burn the stubble on the ground. Harrow down the clods, level the ridges by cross ploughing, work the land thoroughly. Irrigation benefits a sandy soil, draining a marshy soil. It is well to feed down a luxuriant crop when the plants are level with the ridge tops. Geese and cranes, chicory, mildew, thistles, cleavers, caltrops, darnel and shade are farmer's enemies. Scare off the birds, harrow up the weeds, cut down all that shades the crop. Ploughs, waggons, threshing-sledges, harrows, baskets, hurdles, winnowing-fans are the farmer's implements. The plough consists of several parts made of seasoned wood. The threshing-floor must be smooth and rammed hard to leave no crevices for weeds and small animals to get through. Some steep seed in soda and oil lees to get a larger produce. Careful annual selection by hand of the best seed is the only way to prevent degeneration. It is best to mow stubble and hay at night when they are moist.''

In addition to the use of several kinds of animal and other manures, green crops were sometimes ploughed in by the Romans. The shrewdness which, more than inventiveness, characterized their husbandry comes out well in the following quotation from the 18th book of the Natural History of Pliny:--``Cato would have this point especially to be considered, that the soil of a farm be good and fertile; also, that near it there be plenty of labourers and that it be not far from a large town; moreover, that it have sufficient means for transporting its produce, either by water or land. Also that the house be well built, and the land about it as well managed. They are in error who hold the opinion that the negligence and bad husbandry of the former owner is good for his successor. Now, I say there is nothing more dangerous and disadvantageous to the buyer than land so left waste and out of heart; and therefore Cato counsels well to purchase land of one who has managed it well, and not rashly to despise and make light of the skill and knowledge of another.''

Roman writers on agriculture (see GEOPONICI) are more numerous than those of Greece. The earliest important treatises are the De re Rustica of Cato (234-149 B.C.) and the Rerum Rusticarum Libri of Varro. More famous than either are the Georgics of Virgil, published about 30 B.C., and treating of tillage, horticulture, cattle-breeding and bee-keeping. The works of Columella (1st century A.D.) and of Palladius (4th century A.D.) are exhaustive treatises, and the Natural History of the elder Pliny (A.D. 23-70) contains considerable information on husbandry. Under the later empire agriculture sank into a condition of neglect, in which it remained throughout the Dark Ages. In Spain its revival was due to the Saracens, and by them, and their successors the Moors, agriculture was carried to a high pitch of excellence. The work on agriculture1 of Ibn-al-Awame, who lived in the 12th century A.D., treats of the varieties of soils, manuring, irrigation, ploughing, sowing, harvesting, stock, horticulture, arboriculture and plant diseases, and is a lasting record of their skill and industry.

The subsequent history of agriculture is treated in the following pages primarily from the British standpoint. Doubtless Flanders may claim to be the pioneer of ``high farming'' in medieval times, other countries following her lead in many respects. It is not, however, necessary to deal with the agricultural evolution of continental Europe, the gradual progress of agriculture as a whole being well enough typified in the story of its development in England, which indeed has led the way in modern times. After sections on the history and chief modern features of British agriculture, a separate account is given of the general features of American agriculture.

HISTORY OF ENGLISH AGRICULTURE

The ``combined'' or ``common-field'' system of husbandry practised by the village community or township (see VILLAGE COMMUNITIES) may be taken as the starting-point of English agriculture, in which, till the end of the 18th century, it is a dominant influence. The territory of the ``township'' consisted of arable land, meadow, pasture and waste. The arable land was divided into two or, more usually, three fields, which were cut up into strips bounded by balks and allotted to the villagers in such a way that one holding might include several disconnected strips in each field--a measure designed to prevent the whole of the best land falling to one man. The fields were fenced in from seed-time to harvest, after which the fences were taken down and the cattle turned in to feed on the stubble. According to early methods of cropping, which were destined to prevail for centuries, wheat, the chief article of food, was sown in one autumn, reaped the next August; the following spring, oats or barley were sown, and the year following the harvest was a period of fallow. This procedure was followed on each of the three fields so that in every year one of them was fallow. In addition to the cereals, beans, peas and vetches were grown to some extent. The meadow-land was also divided into strips from which the various holders drew their supply of hay. The pasture-land was common to all, though the number of beasts which one man might turn into it was sometimes limited. Rough grazing could also be had on the outlying waste lands. In the absence of artificial grasses and roots, hay was very valuable; it constituted almost the only winter food for live stock, which were consequently in poor condition in spring.

Under the manorial system, the rise of which preceded the Norman Conquest, communal methods of husbandry remained, but the position of the cultivator was radically altered. ``Villeins,'' instead of free-holders, formed the most numerous class of the population. They were bound to the soil and occupied holdings of scattered strips (amounting usually to a virgate or 30 acres) in return for a payment partly in labour and partly in kind. A portion of the manor, generally about a third, constituted the lord's demesne, which, though sometimes separate, usually consisted of strips intermingled with those of his villeins. It thus formed part of the common farm and was cultivated by the villeins and their oxen under the superintendence of a bailiff. Below the villeins in the social scale came the cottiers possessing smaller holdings, sometimes only a garden, and no oxen. Free tenants and, after the Norman Conquest, slaves formed small proportions of the population. During the middle ages cattle and sheep were the chief farm animals, but the intermixture of stock consequent on the common-field system was a barrier to improvement in the breed and conduced to the propagation of disease. Oxen, usually yoked in teams of eight, were used for ploughing. Sheep were small and their fleeces light, nevertheless, owing to the meagreness of the yields of cereals2 and the demand for wool for export, sheep-farming was looked to, as early as the 12th century, as the chief source of profit. Pigs and poultry were universally kept. The treatise on husbandry of Walter of Henley, dating from the early 13th century, is very valuable as describing the management of the demesne under the two- or three-field system. The following are typical passages:--

``April is a good season for fallowing, if the earth breaks up behind the plough: for second fallowing after St John's Day when the dust rises behind the plough; for seed-ploughing when the earth is well settled and not too cracked; however, the busy man cannot be always waiting on the seasons.'' ``At sowing do not plough large furrows, but little and well laid together, that the seed may fall evenly.''

``Know that an acre sown with wheat takes three ploughings, except lands that are sown each year, and that each ploughing costs 6d. more or less and the harrowing 1d. It is well to sow at least two bushels to the acre.''

``Change your seed every year at Michaelmas, for the seed grown on other land will bring you more than that grown on your own.''

``Neither sell your stubble nor move it from the ground unless you need it for thatching. Have manure put up in heaps and mixed with earth.''

``Ridge marshy ground so as to let the water run off.''

During the 13th century there arose a tendency to commute labour-rents for money payments. This change led to the gradual disappearance of tenants in villeinage--the villeins and cottiers--and the rise on the one hand of the small independent farmer, on the other of the hired labourer. The plague of 1348 marks an epoch in English agriculture. The diminution of the population by one-half led to a scarcity of labour and an increase of wages which deprived the landowner of his narrow margin of profit. To meet this situation, the Statute of Labourers (1351) enacted that no man should refuse to work at the same rate of wages as prevailed before the plague. In addition the landowners attempted to revive the disappearing system of labour-rents. The bitter feelings engendered between employer and employed culminated in the peasants' revolt of 1381. Meanwhile large numbers of landowners were forced to adopt one of two alternatives. In some cases they ceased to farm their own land and let it out on lease often together with the stock upon it; or else they abandoned arable culture, laid down their demesnes to pasture, enclosed the waste lands and devoted themselves to sheep-farming. In the latter course they were encouraged by the high prices of wool during the 14th century, and by Edward III.'s policy of fostering both the export of wool and the home manufacture of woollen goods. The 15th century, barren of progress in methods of husbandry, was in its early years moderately prosperous. Later on the increasing abandonment of arable husbandry for sheep-farming brought about a less demand for labour, and rural depopulation was accelerated as the peasant was deprived of his grazing-ground by the enclosure of more and more of the waste land.3

From the beginning of the reign of Henry VII. to the end of Elizabeth's, a number of statutes were made for the

Agriculture under the Tudors and Stuarts.

encouragement of tillage, though probably to little purpose. ``Where in some towns,'' says the statute 4th Henry VII. (1488), ``two hundred persons were occupied and lived of their lawful labours. now there are occupied two or three herdsmen, and the residue fall into idleness''; therefore it is ordained that houses which within three years have been let for farms, with twenty acres of land lying in tillage or husbandry, shall be upheld, under the penalty of half the profits, to be forfeited to the king or the lord of the fee. Almost half a century afterwards the practice had become still more alarming; and in 1534 a new act was tried, apparently with as little success. ``Some have 24,000 sheep, some 20,000 sheep, some 10,000, some 6000, some 4000, and some more and some less''; and yet it is alleged the price of wool had nearly doubled, ``sheep being come to a few persons' hands.'' A penalty was therefore imposed on all who kept above 2000 sheep; and no person was to take in farm more than two tenements of husbandry. By the 39th Elizabeth (1597) arable land made pasture since the 1st Elizabeth shall be again converted into tillage, and what is arable shall not be converted into pasture.

The literature of agriculture, in abeyance since the treatise of Walter of Henley, makes another beginning in the 16th century. The best of the early works is the Book of Husbandry (1st ed. 1523), commonly ascribed to Sir Anthony Fitzherbert, a judge of the Common Pleas in the reign of Henry VIII., but more probably written by his elder brother John. This was followed by the Book of Surveying and Improvements (1523), by the same author. In the former treatise we have a clear and minute description of the rural practices of that period, and from the latter may be learned a good deal of the economy of the feudal system in its decline.

The Book of Husbandry begins with a description of the plough and other implements, after which about a third part of it is occupied with the several operations as they succeed one another throughout the year. Among other passages in this part of the work, the following deserve notice:--

``Somme (ploughs) wyll tourn the sheld bredith at every landsende, and plowe all one way''; the same kind of plough that is now found so useful on hilly grounds. Of wheel-ploughs he observes, that ``they be good on even grounde that lyeth lyghte''; and on such lands they are still most commonly employed. Cart-wheels were sometimes bound with iron; of which he greatly approves. On the much agitated question about the employment of horses or oxen in labour, the most important arguments are distinctly stated.

``In some places,'' he says, ``a horse plough is better,'' and in others an oxen plough, to which, upon the whole, he gives the preference. Beans and peas seem to have been common crops. He mentions the different kinds of wheat, barley and oats; and after describing the method of harrowing ``all maner of cornnes,'' we find the roller employed. ``They used to role their barley grounde after a showr of rayne, to make the grounde even to mowe.'' Under the article ``To falowe,'' he observes, ``the greater clottes (clods) the better wheate, for the clottes kepe the wheat warme all wynter; and at March they will melte and breake and fal in manye small peces, the whiche is a new dongynge and refreshynge of the corne.'' This is agreeable to the present practice, founded on the very same reasons. ``In May, the shepe folde is to be set out''; but Fitzherbert does not much approve of folding, and points out its disadvantages in a very judicious manner. ``In the latter end of May and the begynnynge of June, is tyme to wede the corne''; and then we have an accurate description of the different weeds, and the instruments and mode of weeding. Next comes a second ploughing of the fallow; and afterwards, in the latter end of June, the mowing of the meadows begins. Of this operation, and of the forks and rakes and the haymaking there is a very good account. The corn harvest naturally follows: rye and wheat were usually shorn, and barley and oats cut with the scythe. The writer does not approve of the common practice of cutting wheat high and then mowing the stubbles. ``In Somersetshire,'' he says, ``they do shere theyr wheat very lowe; and the wheate strawe that they purpose to make thacke of, they do not threshe it, but cut off the ears, and bynd it in sheves, and call it rede, and therewith they thacke theyr houses.'' He recommends the practice of setting up corn in shocks, with two sheaves to cover eight, instead of ten sheaves as at present--probably owing to the straw being then shorter. The corn was commonly housed; but if there be a want of room, he advises that the ricks be built on a scaffold and not upon the ground. The fallow received a third ploughing in September, and was sown about Michaelmas. ``Wheat is moost commonlye sowne under the forowe, that is to say, cast it uppon the falowe, and then plowe it under''; and this branch of his subject is concluded with directions about threshing, winnowing and other kinds of barn-work.

Fitzherbert next proceeds to live stock. ``An housbande,'' he says, ``can not well thryue by his corne without he have other cattell, nor by his cattell without corne. And bycause that shepe, in myne opynyon, is the mooste profytablest cattell that any man can haue, therefore I pourpose to speake fyrst of shepe.'' His remarks on this subject are so accurate that one might imagine they came from a storemaster of the present day.

In some places at present ``they neuer seuer their lambes from their dammes''; ``and the poore of the peeke (high) countreye, and such other places, where, as they vse to mylke theyr ewes, they vse to wayne theyr lambes at 12 weekes olde, and to mylke their ewes fiue or syxe weekes''; but that, he observes, ``is greate hurte to the ewes, and wyll cause them that they wyll not take the ramme at the tvme of the yere for pouertye, but goo barreyne.'' ``In June is tyme to shere shepe; and ere they be shorne, they must be verye well washen, the which shall be to the owner greate profyte in the sale of his wool, and also to the clothe-maker.''

His remarks on horses, cattle, &c., are not less interesting; and there is a very good account of the diseases of each species, and some just observations on the advantage of mixing different kinds on the same pasture. Swine and bees conclude this branch of the work.

The author then points out the great advantages of enclosure; recommends ``quycksettynge, dychynge and hedgeyng''; and gives particular directions about settes, and the method of training a hedge, as well as concerning the planting and management of trees. Fitzherbert throws some light on the position of women in the agriculture of his day. ``It is a wyues occupation,'' he says, ``to wynowe all maner of cornes, to make malte, to washe and wrynge, to make heye, shere corne, and, in time of nede, to helpe her husbande to fyll the mucke wayne or dounge carte, dryue the ploughe, to loode heye, corne and suche other; and to go or ride to the market to sel butter, chese, mylke, egges, chekyns, capons, hennes, pygges, gese, and all maner of cornes.''

The Book of Surveying adds considerably to our knowledge of the rural economy of that age. ``Four maner of commens'' are described; several kinds of mills for corn and other purposes, and also ``quernes that goo with hand''; different orders of tenants, down to the ``boundmen,'' who ``in some places contynue as yet''; ``and many tymes, by colour thereof, there be many freemen taken as boundmen, and their lands and goods is taken from them.'' Lime and marl are mentioned as common manures, and the former was sometimes spread on the surface to destroy heath. Both draining and irrigation are noticed, though the latter but slightly. And the work concludes with an inquiry ``how to make a township that is worth XX. marke a yere, worth XX.li. a year,'' advocating the transition from communal or open field to individual or enclosure farming.

``It is undoubted, that to every townshyppe that standeth in tyllage in the playne countrey, there be errable landes to plowe and sowe, and leyse to tye or tedder theyr horses and mares upon, and common pasture to kepe and pasture their catell, beestes and shepe upon; and also they have medowe grounde to get their hey upon. Than to let it be known how many acres of errable lande euery man hath in tyllage, and of the same acres in euery felde to chaunge with his neyghbours, and to leve them toguyther, and to make hym one seuerall close in euery felde for his errable lands; and his leyse in euery felde to leve them togyther in one felde, and to make one seuerall close for them all. And also another seuerall close for his portion of his common pasture, and also his porcion of his medowe in a seuerall close by itselfe, and al kept in seureall both in wynter and somer; and euery cottage shall haue his portion assigned hym accordynge to his rent, and than shall nat the ryche man ouerpresse the poore man with his cattell; and euery man may eate his oun close at his pleasure. And vndoubted, that hay and strawe that will find one beest in the house wyll finde two beestes in the close, and better they shall lyke. For those beestis in the house have short heare and thynne, and towards March they will pylle and be bare; and therefore they may nat abyde in the fylde before the heerdmen in wintertyme for colde. And those that lye in a close under a hedge haue longe heare and thyck, and they will neuer pylle nor be bare: and by this reason the husbande maye keoe twyse so many catell as he did before.

``This is the cause of this approwment. Nowe euery husbande hath sixe seuerall closes, whereof iii. be for corne, the fourthe for his leyse, the fyfte for his commen pastures, and the sixte for his haye; and in wynter time there is but one occupied with corne, and than hath the husbande other fyue to occupiy tyll lente come, and that he hath his falowe felde, his ley felde, and his pasture felde al sommer. And when he hath mowen his medowe, then he hath his medowe grounde, soo that if he hath any weyke catell that wold be amended, or dyvers maner of catell, he may put them in any close he wyll, the which is a great advantage; and if all shulde lye commen, than wolde the edyche of the corne feldes and the aftermath of all the medowes be eaten in X. or XII. dayes. And the rych men that hath moche catell wold have the advantage, and the poore man can have no help nor relefe in wynter when he hath moste nede; and if an acre of lande be worthe sixe pens, or it be enclosed, it will be worth VIII. pens, when it is enclosed by reason of the compostying and dongyng of the catell that shall go and lye upon it both day and nighte; and if any of his thre closes that he hath for his corne be worne or ware bare, than he may breke and plowe up his close that he hadde for his layse, or the close that he hadde for his commen pasture, or bothe, and sowe them with corne, and let the other lye for a time, and so shall he have always reist grounde, the which will bear moche corne with lytel donge; and also he shall have a great profyte of the wod in the hedges whan it is growen; and not only these profytes and advantages beforesaid, but he shall save moche more than al these, for by reason of these closes he shall save meate, drinke and wages of a shepherde, the wages of the heerdmen, and the wages of the swine herde, the which may fortune to be as chargeable as all his holle rente; and also his corne shall be better saved from eatinge or destroyeng with catel. For dout ye nat but heerdemen with their catell, shepeherdes with their shepe, and tieng of horses and mares, destroyeth moch corne, the which the hedges wold save. Paraduenture some men would say that this shuld be against the common weale, bicause the shepeherdes, heerdmen and swyne-herdes shuld than be put out of wages. To that it may be answered. though these occupations be not used, there be as many newe occupations that were not used before; as getting of quicke settes. diching, hedging and plashing, the which the same men may use and occupye.''

The next author who writes professedly on agriculture is Thomas Tusser, whose Five Hundred Points of Husbandry, published in 1562, enjoyed such lasting repute that in 1723 Lord Molesworth recommended that it should be taught in schools. In it the book of husbandry consists of 118 pages, and then follows the Point of Housewifrie, occupying 42 pages more. It is written in verse. Amidst much that is valueless there are some useful notices concerning the state of agriculture at the time in different parts of England. Hops, which had been introduced in the early part of the 16th century, and on the culture of which a treatise was published in 1574 by Reginald Scott, are mentioned as a well-known crop. Buckwheat was sown after barley. Hemp and flax are mentioned as common crops. Enclosures must have been numerous in some counties; and there is a very good comparison between ``champion (open fields) country and several,'' which Blith afterwards transcribed into his Improver Improved. Carrots, cabbages, turnips and rape, not yet cultivated in the fields, are mentioned among the herbs and roots for the kitchen. There is nothing to be found in Tusser about serfs or bondmen, as in Fitzherbert's works.

In 1577 appeared the Foure Bookes of Husbandry, translated, with augmentation, from the work of Conrad Heresbach. Much stress is laid on the value of manure, and mention is made of clover.

Fitzherbert, in deploring the gradual discontinuance of the practice of marling land, had alluded to the grievance familiar in modern times of tenants ``who, if they should marl and make their holdings much better, fear lest they should be put out, or make a great fine or else pay more rent.'' This subject is treated at length in Sir John Norden's Surveyor's Dialogue (1st ed. 1607), the next agricultural work demanding notice. The author, writing from the landowner's point of view, ascribes the rise in rents and the rise in the price of corn4 to the ``emulation'' of tenants in competing for holdings, a practice implying that the agriculture of the period was prosperous. Norden's work contains many judicious observations on the ``different natures of grounds, how they may be employed, how they may be bettered, reformed and amended.'' The famous meadows near Salisbury are mentioned, where, when cattle have fed their fill, hogs, it is said, ``are made fat with the remnant--namely, with the knots and sappe of the grasse.'' ``Clouer grasse, or the grasse honey suckle'' (white clover), is directed to be sown with other hay seeds. ``Carrot rootes'' were then raised in several parts of England, and sometimes by farmers. London street and stable dung was carried to a distance by water, and appears from later writers to have been got for the trouble of removing. Leases of 21 years are recommended for persons of small capital as better than employing it in purchasing land. The works of Gervase Markham, Leonard Mascall, Gabriel Plattes and other authors of the first half of the 17th century may be passed over, the best part of them being preserved by Blith and Hartlib, who are referred to below.

Sir Richard Weston's Discourse on the Husbandry of Brabant and Flanders was published by Hartlib in 1645, and its title indicates the source to which England owed much of its subsequent agricultural advancement. Weston was ambassador from England to the elector palatine in 1619, and had the merit of being the first who introduced the Great Clover, as it was then called, into English agriculture, about 1652, and probably turnips also. Clover thrives best, he says, when you sow it on the barrenest ground, such as the worst heath ground in England. The ground is to be pared and burnt, and unslacked lime must be added to the ashes. It is next to be well ploughed and harrowed; and about 10 lb. of clover seed must be sown on an acre in April or the end of March. If you intend to preserve seed, then the second crop must be let stand till it come to a full and dead ripeness, and you shall have at the least five bushels per acre. Being once sown, it will last five years; the land, when ploughed, will yield, three or four years together, rich crops of wheat, and after that a crop of oats, with which clover seed is to be sown again. It is in itself an excellent manure, Sir Richard adds; and so it should be, to enable land to bear this treatment. Before 1655 the culture of clover, exactly according to the present method, seems to have been well known in England, and it had also made its way to Ireland.

A great many works on agriculture appeared during the time of the Commonwealth, of which Walter Blith's Improver Improved and Samuel Hartlib's Legacie are the most valuable. The first edition of the former was published in 1649, and of the latter in 1651; and both of them were enlarged in subsequent editions. In the first edition of the Improver Improved no mention is made of clover, nor in the second of turnips, but in the third, clover is treated of at some length, and turnips are recommended as an excellent cattle crop, the culture of which should be extended from the kitchen garden to the field. Sir Richard Weston must have cultivated turnips before this; for Blith says that Sir Richard affirmed to himself that he fed his swine with them. They were first given boiled, but afterwards the swine came to eat them raw, and would run after the carts, and pull them forth as they gathered them--an expression which conveys an idea of their being cultivated in the fields.

Blith's book is the first systematic work in which there are some traces of alternate husbandry or the practice of interposing clover and turnip between culmiferous crops. He is a great enemy to commons and common fields, and to retaining land in old pasture, unless it be of the best quality. His description of the different kinds of ploughs is interesting; and he justly recommends such as were drawn by two horses (some even by one horse) in preference to the weighty and clumsy machines which required four or more horses or oxen. The following passage indicates the contemporary theory of manuring:---``In thy tillage are these special opportunities to improve it, either by liming, marling, sanding, earthing, mudding, snayl-codding, mucking, chalking, pidgeons-dung, hens-dung, hogs-dung or by any other means as some by rags, some by coarse wool, by pitch marks, and tarry stuff, any oyly stuff, salt and many things more, yea indeed any thing almost that hath any liquidness, foulness, saltness or good moysture in it, is very naturall inrichment to almost any sort of land.'' Blith speaks of an instrument which ploughed, sowed and harrowed at the same time; and the setting of corn was then a subject of much discussion. Blith was a zealous advocate of drainage and holds that drains to be efficient must be laid 3 or 4 ft. deep. The drainage of the Great Level of the Fens was prosecuted during the 17th century, but lack of engineering skill and the opposition of the fen-men hindered the reclamation of a now fertile region.

Hartlib's Legacie contains, among some very judicious directions, a great deal of rash speculation. Several of the deficiencies which the writer complains of in English agriculture must be placed to the account of climate, and never have been or can be supplied. Some of his recommendations are quite unsuitable to the state of the country, and display more of general knowledge and good intention than of either the theory or practice of agriculture. Among the subjects deserving notice may be mentioned the practice of steeping and liming seed corn as a preventive of smut; changing every year the Species of grain, and bringing seed corn from a distance; ploughing down green crops as manure; and feeding horses with broken oats and chaff. This writer seems to differ a good deal from Blith about the advantage of interchanging tillage and pasture. ``It were no losse to this island,'' he says, ``if that we should not plough at all, if so be that we could certainly have corn at a reasonable rate, and likewise vent for all our manufactures of wool''; and one reason for this is, that pasture employs more hands than tillage, instead of depopulating the country, as was commonly imagined. The Grout, which he mentions as ``coming over to us in Holland ships,'' about which he desires information, was probably the same as shelled barley; and mills for manufacturing it were introduced into Scotland from Holland towards the beginning of the 18th century.

Among the other writers previous to the Revolution mention must be made of John Ray the botanist and of John Evelyn, both men of great talent and research, whose works are still in high estimation.

The first half of the 17th century was a period of agricultural activity, partly due, no doubt, to the increase of enclosed farms. Marling and liming are again practised, new agricultural implements and manures introduced, and the new crops more widely used. But the Civil War and the subsequent politicaldisturbances intervened to prevent the continuance of this progress, and the agriculture of the end of the century seems to have relapsed into stagnation.

Scottish agriculture of the 17th century.

Of the state of agriculture in Scotland in the 16th and the greater part of the 17th century very little is known; no professed treatise on the subject appeared till after the Revolution. The south-eastern counties were the earliest improved, and yet in 1660 their condition seems to have been very wretched. Ray, who made a tour along the eastern coast in that year, says, ``We observed little or no fallow ground in Scotland; some ley ground we saw, which they manured with sea wreck. The men seemed to be very lazy, and may be frequently observed to plough in their cloaks. It is the fashion of them to wear cloaks when they go abroad, but especially on Sundays. They have neither good bread, cheese nor drink. They cannot make them, nor will they learn. Their butter is very indifferent, and one would wonder how they could contrive to make it so bad. They use much pottage made of coal-wort, which they call kail, sometimes broth of decorticated barley. The ordinary country-houses are pitiful cots, built of stone and covered with turfs, having in them but one room, many of them no chimneys, the windows very small holes and not glazed. The ground in the valleys and plains bear very good corn, but especially bears barley or bigge, and oats, but rarely wheat and rye.''

It is probable that no great change had taken place in Scotland from the end of the 15th century, except that tenants gradually became possessed of a little stock of their own, instead of having their farm stocked by the landlord. ``The minority of James V., the reign of Mary Stuart, the infancy of her son, and the civil wars of her grandson Charles I., were all periods of lasting waste. The very laws which were made during successive reigns for protecting the tillers of the soil from spoil are the best proofs of the deplorable state of the husbandman.''5

In the 17th century those laws were made which paved the way for an improved system of agriculture in Scotland. By a statute of 1633 landholders were enabled to have their tithes valued, and to buy them either at nine or six years' purchase, according to the nature of the property. The statute of 1685, conferring on landlords a power to entail their estates, was indeed of a very different tendency in regard to its effects on agriculture. But the two Acts in 1695, for the division of commons and separation of intermixed properties, facilitated improvements.

Progress of agriculture from 1688 to 1760.

From the Revolution to the accession of George III. the progress of agriculture was by no means so considerable as might be imagined from the great exportation of corn. It is probable that very little improvement had taken place, either in the cultivation of the soil or in the management of live stock, from the Restoration down to the middle of the 18th century. Clover and turnips were confined to a few districts, and at the latter period were scarcely cultivated at all by common farmers in the northern part of the island. Of the writers of this period, therefore, it is necessary to notice only such as describe some improvement in the modes of culture, or some extension of the practices that were formerly little known.

In John Houghton's Collections on Husbandry and Trade, a periodical work begun in 1681, there is one of the earliest notices of turnips being eaten by sheep:----``Some in Essex have their fallow after turnips, which feed their sheep in winter, by which means the turnips are scooped, and so made capable to hold dews and rain water, which, by corrupting, imbibes the nitre of the air, and when the shell breaks it runs about and fertilizes. By feeding the sheep, the land is dunged as if it had been folded; and those turnips, though few or none be carried off for human use, are a very excellent improvement, nay, some reckon it so, though they only plough the turnips in without feeding.'' This was written in February 1694. Ten years before, John Worlidge, one of his correspondents, and the author of the Systema Agriculturae (1669), observes, ``Sheep fatten very well on turnips, which prove an excellent nourishment for them in hard winters when fodder is scarce; for they will not only eat the greens, but feed on the roots in the ground, and scoop them hollow even to the very skin. Ten acres (he adds) sown with clover, turnips, &c., will feed as many sheep as one hundred acres thereof would before have done.''

The next writer of note is John Mortimer, whose Whole Art of Husbandry, a regular, systematic work of considerable merit, was published in 1707.

From the third edition of Hartlib's Legacie we learn that clover was cut green and given to cattle; and it appears that this practice of soiling, as it is now called, had become very common about the beginning of the 18th century, wherever clover was cultivated. Rye-grass was now sown along with it. Turnips were hand-hoed and extensively employed in feeding sheep and cattle.

The first considerable improvement in the practice of that period was introduced by Jethro Tull, a gentleman of Berkshire, who about the year 1701 invented the drill, and whose Horse-hoeing Husbandry, published in 1731, exhibits the first decided step in advance upon the principles and practices of his predecessors. Not contented with a careful attention to details, Tull set himself, with admirable skill and perseverance, to investigate the growth of plants, and thus to arrive at a knowledge of the principles by which the cultivation of field-crops should be regulated. Having arrived at the conclusion that the food of plants consists of minute particles of earth taken up by their rootlets, it followed that the more thoroughly the soil in which they grew was disintegrated, the more abundant would be the ``pasture'' (as he called it) to which their fibres would have access. He was thus led to adopt that system of sowing his crops in rows or drills, so wide apart as to admit of tillage of the intervals, both by ploughing and hoeing, being continued until they had well-nigh arrived at maturity. Such reliance did he place in the pulverization of the soil that he grew as many as thirteen crops of wheat on the same field without manure.

As the distance between his rows appeared much greater than was necessary for the range of the roots of the plants, he begins by showing that these roots extend much farther than is commonly believed, and then proceeds to inquire into the nature of their food. After examining several hypotheses, he decides this to be fine particles of earth. The chief and almost the only use of dung, he thinks, is to divide the earth, to dissolve ``this terrestrial matter, which affords nutriment to the mouths of vegetable roots''; and this can be done more completely by tillage. It is therefore necessary not only to pulverize the soil by repeated ploughings before it be seeded, but, as it becomes gradually more and more compressed afterwards, recourse must be had to tillage while the plants are growing; and this is hoeing, which also destroys the weeds that would deprive the plants of their nourishment.

The leading features of Tull's husbandry are his practice of laying the land into narrow ridges of 5 or 6 ft., and upon the middle of these drilling one, two, or three rows, distant from one another about 7 in. when there were three, and 10 in. when only two. The distance of the plants on one ridge from those on the contiguous one he called an interval; the distance between the rows on the same ridge, a space or partition; the former was stirred repeatedly by the horse-hoe, the latter by the hand-hoe.

``Hoeing,'' he says, ``may be divided into deep, which is our horse-hoeing; and shallow, which is the English hand-hoeing; and also the shallow horse-hoeing used in some places betwixt rows, where the intervals are very narrow, as 16 or 18 inches. This is but an imitation of the hand-hoe, or a succenadeum to it, and can neither supply the use of dung nor fallow, and may be properly called scratch-hoeing.'' But in his mode of forming ridges his practice seems to have been original; his implements, especially his drill, display much ingenuity; and his claim to the title of founder of the present horse-hoeing husbandry of Great Britain seems indisputable.

Contemporary with Tull was Charles, 2nd Viscount Townshend, a typical representative of the large landowners to whom the strides made by agriculture in the 18th century were due. The class to which he belonged was the only one which could afford to initiate improvements. The bulk of the land was still farmed by small tenants on the old common-field system, which made it impossible for the individual to adopt a new crop rotation and hindered innovation of every kind. On the other hand, the small farmers who occupied separated holdings were deterred from improving by the fear of a rise in rent. Townshend's belief in the growing of turnips gained him the nickname of ``Turnip Townshend.'' In their cultivation he adopted Tull's practice of drilling and horse-hoeing, and he was also the founder of the Norfolk or four-course system, the first of those rotations which dispense with the necessity of a summer-fallow and provide winter-keep for live-stock (see below, Rotation of Crops). The spread of these principles in Norfolk made it, according to Arthur Young (writing in 1770), one of the best cultivated counties in England. In the latter half of the century another Norfolk farmer, Thomas William Coke of Holkham, earl of Leicester, (1752-1842), figures as a pioneer of high-farming. He was one of the first to use oil-cake and bone-manure, to distinguish the feeding values of grasses, to appreciate to the full the beneficial effects of stock on light lands and to realize the value of long leases as an incentive to good farming.

Agriculture in Scotland in the 18th century.

Of the progress of the art in Scotland, till towards the end of the 17th century, we are almost entirely ignorant. The first work, written by James Donaldson, was printed in 1697, under the title of Husbandry Anatomized; or, Inquiry into the Present Manner of Tilling and Manuring the Ground in Scotland. It appears from this treatise that the state of the art was not more advanced at that time in North Britain than it had been in England in the time of Fitzherbert. Farms were divided into infield and outfield; corn crops followed one another without the intervention of fallow, cultivated herbage or turnips, though something is said about fallowing the outfield; enclosures were very rare; the tenantry had not begun to emerge from a state of great poverty and depression; and the wages of labour, compared with the price of corn, were much lower than at present, though that price, at least in ordinary years, must appear extremely moderate in our times. Leases for a term of years, however, were not uncommon; but the want of capital rendered it impossible for the tenantry to attempt any spirited improvements.

The next work on the husbandry of Scotland is The Countryman's Rudiments, or Advice to the Farmers in East Lothian, how to labour and improve their Grounds, said to have been written by John Hamilton, 2nd Lord Belhaven about the time of the Union, and reprinted in 1723. The author bespeaks the favour of those to whom he addresses himself in the following significant terms:---``Neither shall I affright you with hedging, ditching, marling, chalking, paring and burning, draining, watering and such like, which are all very good improvements indeed, and very agreeable with the soil and situation of East Lothian, but I know ye cannot bear as yet a crowd of improvements, this being only intended to initiate you in the true method and principles of husbandry.'' The farm-rooms in East Lothian, as in other districts, were divided into infield and outfield.

``The infield (where wheat is sown) is generally divided by the tenant into four divisions or breaks, as they call them, viz. one of wheat, one of barley, one of pease and one of oats, so that the wheat is sowd after the pease, the barley after the wheat and the oats after the barley. The outfield land is ordinarily made use of promiscuously for feeding of their cows, horse, sheep and oxen; 'tis also dunged by their sheep who lay in earthen folds; and sometimes, when they have much of it, they fauch or fallow a part of it yearly.''

Under this management the produce seems to have been three times the seed; and yet, says the writer, ``if in East Lothian they did not leave a higher stubble than in other places of the kingdom, their grounds would be in a much worse condition than at present they are, though bad enough.'' ``A good crop of corn makes a good stubble, and a good stubble is the equalest mucking that is.'' Among the advantages of enclosures, he observes, ``you will gain much more labour from your servants, a great part of whose time was taken up in gathering thistles and other garbage for their horses to feed upon in their stables; and thereby the great trampling and pulling up and other destruction of the corns while they are yet tender will be prevented.'' Potatoes and turnips are recommended to be sown in the yard (kitchen-garden). Clover does not seem to have been in use. Rents were paid in corn; and for the largest farm, which he thinks should employ no more than two ploughs, the rent was about six chalders of victual ``when the ground is very good, and four in that which is not so good. But I am most fully convinced they should take long leases or tacks, that they may not be straitened with time in the improvement of their rooms; and this is profitable both for master and tenant.''

Such was the state of the husbandry of Scotland in the early part of the 18th century. The first attempts at improvement cannot be traced farther back than 1723, when a number of landholders formed themselves into a society, under the title of the Society of Improvers in the Knowledge of Agriculture in Scotland. John, 2nd earl of Stair, one of their most active members, is said to have been the first who cultivated turnips in that country. The Select Transactions of this society were collected and published in 1743 by Robert Maxwell, who took a large part in its proceedings. It is evident from this book that the society had exerted itself with success in introducing cultivated herbage and turnips, as well as in improving the former methods of culture. But there is reason to believe that the influence of the example of its numerous members did not extend to the common tenantry, who not unnaturally were reluctant to adopt the practices of those by whom farming was perhaps regarded as primarily a source of pleasure rather than of profit. Though this society, the earliest probably in the United Kingdom, soon counted upwards of 300 members, it existed little more than 20 years.

In the introductory paper in Maxwell's collection we are told that--

``The practice of draining, enclosing, summer fallowing, sowing flax, hemp, rape, turnip and grass seeds, planting cabbages after, and potatoes with, the plough, in fields of great extent, is introduced; and that, according to the general opinion, more corn grows now yearly where it was never known to grow before, these twenty years last past, than perhaps a sixth of all that the kingdom was in use to produce at any time before.''

In 1757 Maxwell issued another work entitled The Practical Husbandman; being a collection of miscellaneous papers on Husbandry, &c. In it the greater part of the Select Transactions is republished, with a number of new papers, among which an Essay on the Husbandry of Scotland, with a proposal for the improvement of it, is the most valuable. In this he lays it down as a rule that it is bad husbandry to take two crops of grain successively, which marks a considerable progress in the knowledge of modern husbandry; though he adds that in Scotland the best husbandmen after a fallow take a crop of wheat; after the wheat, peas; then barley, and then oats; and after that they fallow again. The want of enclosures was still a matter of complaint. The ground continued to be cropped so long as it produced two seeds; the best farmers were contented with four seeds, which was more than the general produce.

1760 to 1815.

The gradual advance in the price of farm produce soon after the year 1760, occasioned by the increase of population and of wealth derived from manufactures and commerce, gave a powerful stimulus to rural industry, augmented agricultural capital and called forth a more skilful and enterprising race of farmers.

A more rational system of cropping now began to take the place of the thriftless and barbarous practice of sowing successive crops of corn until the land was utterly exhausted, and then leaving it foul with weeds to recover its pover by an indefinite period of rest. Green crops, such as turnips, clover and rye. grass, began to be alternated with grain crops, whence the name alternate husbandry.

The writings of Arthur Young (q.v.), secretary to the Board of Agriculture, describe the transition from the old to the new agriculture. In many places turnips and clover were still unknown or ignored. Large districts still clung to the old common-field system, to the old habits of ploughing with teams of four or eight, and to slovenly methods of cultivation. Young's condemnation of these survivals was as pronounced as his support of the methods of the large farmers to whom he ascribed the excellence of the husbandry of Kent, Norfolk and Essex. He realized that with the enclosure of the waste lands and the absorption of small into large holdings, the common-field farmer must migrate to the town or become a hired labourer; but he also realized that to feed a rapidly growing industrial population, the land must be improved by draining, marling, manuring and the use of better implements, in short by the investment of the capital which the yeoman farmer, content to feed himself and his own family, did not possess. The enlargement of farms, and in Scotland the letting of them under leases for a considerable term of years, continued to be a marked feature in the agricultural progress of the country until the end of the century, and is to be regarded both as a cause and a consequence of that progress. The passing of some 3500 enclosure bills, affecting between 5 and 5 1/2 million acres, during the reign of George III., before which the whole number was between 200 and 250, shows how rapidly the break-up of the common-field husbandry and the cultivation of new land now proceeded. The disastrous American War for a time interfered with the national prosperity; but with the return of peace in 1783 the cultivation of the country made more rapid progress. The quarter of a century immediately following 1760 is memorable for the introduction of various important improvements. It was during this period that the genius of Robert Bakewell produced an extraordinary change in the character of our more important breeds of live stock, more especially by the perfecting of a new race of sheep--the well-known Leicesters. Bakewell's fame as a breeder was for a time enhanced by the improvement which he effected on the Long-horned cattle, then the prevailing breed of the midland counties of England. These, however, were ere long rivalled and afterwards superseded by the Shorthorn or Durham breed, which the brothers Charles and Robert Colling obtained from the useful race of cattle that had long existed in the valley of the Tees, by applying to them the principle of breeding which Bakewell had already established. To this period also belong George and Matthew Culley--the former a pupil of Bakewell-- who left their paternal property on the bank of the Tees and settled on the Northumbrian side of the Tweed, bringing with them the valuable breeds of live stock and improved husbandry of their native district. The improvements introduced by these energetic and skilful farmers spread rapidly, and exerted a most beneficial influence upon the border counties.

From 1784 to 1795 improvements advanced with steady steps. This period was distinguished for the adoption and working out of ascertained improvements. Small's swing plough and Andrew Meikle's threshing-machine, although invented some years before this, were now perfected and brought into general use, to the great furtherance of agriculture. Two important additions were about this time made to the field crops, viz. the Swedish turnip and potato oat. The latter was accidentally discovered in 1788, and both soon came into general cultivation. In the same year Merino sheep were introduced by George III., who was a zealous farmer. For a time this breed attracted much attention, and sanguine expectations were entertained that it would prove of national importance. Its unfitness for the production of mutton, and increasing supplies of fine clothing wool from other countries, soon led to its total rejection.

In Scotland the opening up of the country by the construction of practicable roads, and the enclosing and subdividing of farms by hedge and ditch, was now in active progress. The former admitted of the general use of wheel-carriages, of the ready conveyance of produce to markets, and in particular of the extended use of lime, the application of which was immediately followed by a great increase of produce. The latter, besides its more obvious advantages, speedily freed large tracts of country from stagnant water and their inhabitants from ague, and prepared the way for the underground draining which soon after began to be practised. Dawson of Frogden in Roxburghshire is believed to have been the first who grew turnips as a field crop to any extent. It is on record that as early as 1764 he had 100 acres of drilled turnips on his farm in one year. An Act passed in 1770, which relaxed the rigour of strict entails and afforded power to landlords to grant leases and otherwise improve their estates, had a beneficial effect on Scottish agriculture.

The husbandry of the country was thus steadily improving, when suddenly the whole of Europe became involved in the wars of the French Revolution. In 1795, under the joint operation of a deficient harvest and the diminution in foreign supplies of grain owing to outbreak of war, the price of wheat, which, for the twenty preceding years, had been under 50s. a quarter, suddenly rose to 81s. 6d., and in the following year reached 96s. In 1797 the fear of foreign invasion led to a panic and run upon the banks, in which emergency the Bank Restriction Act, suspending cash payment, was passed, and ushered in a system of unlimited credit transactions. Under the unnatural stimulus of these extra-ordinary events, every branch of industry extended with unexampled rapidity. But in nothing was this so apparent as in agriculture; the high prices of produce holding out a great inducement to improve lands then arable, to reclaim others that had previously lain waste, and to bring much pasture-land under the plough. Nor did this increased tillage interfere with the increase of live stock, as the green crops of the alternate husbandry more than compensated for the diminished pasturage. This extraordinary state of matters lasted from 1795 to 1814, the prices of produce even increasing towards the close of that period. The average price of wheat for the whole period was 89s. 7d. per quarter; but for the last five years it was 107s., and in 1812 it reached 126s. 6d. The agriculture of Great Britain, as a whole, advanced with rapid strides during this period; but nowhere was the change so great as in Scotland. Indeed, its progress there, during these twenty years, is probably without parallel in the history of any other country. This is accounted for by a concurrence of circumstances. Previous to this period the husbandry of Scotland was still in a backward state as compared with the best districts of England, where many practices, only of recent introduction in the north, had been in general use for generations. This disparity made the subsequent contrast the more striking. The land in Scotland was now, with trifling exceptions, let on leases for terms varying from twenty to thirty years, and in farms of sufficient size to employ at the least two or three ploughs. The unlimited issues of government paper and the security afforded by these leases induced the Scottish banks to afford every facility to landlords and tenants to embark capital in the improvement of the land. The substantial education supplied by the parish schools, of which nearly the whole population could then avail themselves, had diffused through all ranks such a measure of intelligence as enabled them promptly to dhscern and skilfully and energetically to take advantage of this spring-tide of prosperity, and to profit by the agricultural information now plentifully furnished by means of the Bath and West of England Society, established in 1777; the Highland Society, instituted in 1784; and the National Board of Agriculture, in 1793.

1815 to 1875.

The restoration of peace to Europe, and the re-enactment of the Corn Laws in 1815, mark the beginning of another era in the history of agriculture. The sudden return to peace-prices was followed by a time of severe depression, low wages, diminished rents and bad farming. The fall in prices was aggravated, first by the unpropitious weather and deficient harvest of the years 1816, 1817, and still more by the passing in 1819 of the bill restoring cash payments, which, coming into operation in 1821, caused serious embarrassment to all persons who had entered into engagements at a depreciated currency, which had now to be met with the lower prices of an enhanced one. The frequency of select-committees and commissions, which sat in 1814, 1821 and 1822, 1833 and 1836, testifies to the gravity of the crisis. The years 1830-1833 are especially memorable for a disastrous outbreak of sheep-rot and for agrarian outrages, caused partly by the dislike of the labourers to the introduction of agricultural machines.

During this period of depression, which lasted till the 'forties, want of confidence prevented any general improvement in agricultural methods. At the same time, certain developments destined to exercise considerable influence in later times are to be noted. Before the close of the 18th century, and during the first quarter of the 19th, a good deal had been done in the way of draining the land, either by open ditches or by James Elkington's system of deep covered drains. In 1834 James Smith of Deanston promulgated his system of thorough draining and deep ploughing, the adoption of which immeasurably improved the clay lands of the country. The early years of the reign of Queen Victoria witnessed the strengthening of the union between agriculture and chemistry. The Board of Agriculture in 1803 had commissioned Sir Humphry Davy to deliver a course of lectures on the connexion of chemistry with vegetable physiology. In 1840 the appearance of Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology by Justus von Liebig set on foot a movement in favour of scientific husbandry, the most notable outcome of which was the establishment by Sir John Bennet Lawes in 1843 of the experimental station of Rothamsted. Since Blith's time bone was the one new fertilizer that had come into use. Nitrate of soda, Peruvian guano and superphosphate of lime in the form of bones dissolved by sulphuric acid were now added to the list of manures, and the practice of analysing soils became more general. Manual labour in farming operations began to be superseded by the use of drills, hay-makers and horse-rakes, chaff-cutters and root-pulpers. The reaping-machine, invented in 1812 by John Common, improved upon by the Rev. Patrick Bell in England and by Cyrus H. McCormick and others in America, and finally perfected about 1879 by the addition of an efficient self-binding apparatus, is the most striking example of the application of mechanics to agriculture. Improvements in the plough, harrow and roller were introduced, adapting those implements to different soils and purposes. The steam-engine first took the place of horses as a threshing power in 1803, but it was not until after 1850 that it was applied to the plough and cultivator. The employment of agricultural machines received considerable impetus from the Great Exhibition of 1851. The much-debated Corn Laws, after undergoing various modifications, and proving the fruitful source of business uncertainty, social discontent and angry partisanship, were finally abolished in 1846, although the act was not consummated until three years later. Several other acts of the legislature passed during this period exerted a beneficial influence on agriculture. Of these, the first in date and importance is the Tithe Commutation Act of 1836. Improvement was also stimulated by the Public Money Drainage Acts 1846-1856, under which government was empowered to advance money on certain conditions for the improvement of estates. Additional facilities were granted by the act passed in 1848 for disentailing estates, and for burdening such as are entailed with the share of the cost of certain specified improvements.

Meanwhile much had been done in the organization of agricultural knowledge. Mention has already been made of the institution of the Highland Society and the National Board of Agriculture. These institutions were the means of collecting a vast amount of statistical and general information connected with agriculture, and by their publications and premiums made known the practices of the best-farmed districts and encouraged their adoption elsewhere. These associations were soon aided in their important labours by numerous local societies which sprang up in all parts of the kingdom. After a highly useful career, under the presidency till 1813 of Sir John Sinclair, the Board of Agriculture was dissolved in 1819, but left in its statistical account, county surveys and other documents much interesting and valuable information regarding the agriculture of the period. In 1800 the original Farmer's Magazine came into existence under the editorship of Robert Brown of Markle, the author of the well-known treatise on Rural Affairs. The Highland Society having early extended its operations to the whole of Scotland, by and by made a corresponding addition to its title, and as the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland gradually extended its operations. In 1828, shortly after the discontinuance of the Farmers' Magazine, its Prize Essays and Transactions began to be issued statedly in connexion with the Quarterly Journal of Agriculture. This society early began to hold a great show of live stock, implements, &c. In 1842 certain Midlothian tenant-farmers had the merit of originating an Agricultural Chemistry Association (the first of its kind), by which funds were raised for the purpose of conducting such investigations as the title of the society implies. After a successful trial of a few years this association was dissolved, transferring its functions to the Highland and Agricultural Society.

In England the Agricultural Society was founded in 1838, with the motto ``Practice with Science,'' and shortly afterwards incorporated by royal charter. In 1845 the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester was incorporated. This era of revival was not, however, without its calamities. The foot-and-mouth disease first appeared about 1840, having been introduced, as is supposed, by foreign cattle. It spread rapidly over the country, affecting all domesticated animals except horses, and although seldom attended by fatal results, caused everywhere great alarm and loss. It was soon followed by the more terrible lung-disease, or pleuro-pneumonia. In 1865 the rinderpest, or steppe murrain, originating amongst the vast herds of the Russian steppes, had spread westward over Europe, until it was brought to London by foreign cattle. Several weeks elapsed before the true character of the disease was known, and in this brief space it had already been carried by animals purchased in Smithfield market to all parts of the country. After causing the most frightful losses, it was at last stamped out by the resolute slaughter of all affected animals and of all that had been in contact with them. Severe as were the losses in flocks and herds from these imported diseases, they were eclipsed by the ravages of the mysterious potato blight, which, first appearing in 1845, pervaded the whole of Europe, and in Ireland especially proved the precursor of famine and pestilence.

A short period of low prices followed the repeal of the Corn Laws, wheat averaging only 38s. 6d. a quarter in 1851, but the years from 1852 to 1875 were the most prosperous of the century. The letters written by Sir James Caird to The Times during 1850, and republished in 1852 under the title English Agriculture in 1850-1851, give a general review of English agriculture at the time. The scientific and mechanical improvements of the first half of the century were widely adopted, while the prices of the protectionist period showed little decline. Amelioration in all breeds of domesticated animals was manifested, not so much in the production of individual specimens of high merit as in the diffusion of these and other good breeds over the country, and in the improved quality of live stock as a whole. The fattening of animals was conducted on more scientific principles. Increased attention was successfully bestowed on the improvement of field crops. Improved varieties, obtained by cross-impregnation either naturally or artificially brought about, were carefully propagated and generally adopted, and increased attention was bestowed on the cultivation of the natural grasses. The most important additions to the list of field crops were Italian rye-grass, winter beans, white Belgian carrot and alsike clover.

Agriculture since 1875.

The last quarter of the 19th century proved, however, a fateful period for British agriculture. The great future that seemed to await the application of steam power to the tillage of the soil proved illusory. The clay soils of England, the latent fertility of which was to be brought into play in a fashion that should mightily augment the home-grown supplies of food, remained intractable, and the extent of land devoted to the cultivation of corn crops, instead of expanding, diminished in a marked degree. British farmers of long experience look back to 1874 as the last of the really good years, and consider that the palmy days of British agriculture began to dwindle at about that time. The shadow of the approaching depression had already fallen upon the land before the year 1875 had run its course, and the outlook became ominous as the decade of the 'seventies neared its close. One memorable feature was associated with 1877 in that this was the last year in which the dreaded cattle plague (rinderpest) made its appearance in England. The same year, 1877, was the last also in which the annual average price of English wheat (then 56s. 9d.) exceeded 50s. a quarter. With declining prices for farm produce came that year of unhappy memory, 1879, when persistent rains and an almost sunless summer ruined the crops and reduced many farmers to a state of destitution. Much of the grain was never harvested, whilst owing mainly to the excessive floods there commenced an outbreak of liver-rot in sheep, due to the ravages of the fluke parasite. This continued for several years, and the mortality was so great that its adverse effects upon the ovine population of the country were still perceptible ten years afterwards. A fall in rents was the necessary sequel of the agricultural distress, to inquire into which a royal commission was appointed in 1879, under the chairmanship of the duke of Richmond and Gordon. Its report, published in 1882, testified to ``the great extent and intensity of the distress which has fallen upon the agricultural community. Owners and occupiers have alike suffered from it. No description of estate or tenure has been exempted. The owner in fee and life tenant, the occupier, whether of large or of small holding, whether under lease, or custom, or agreement, or the provisions of the Agricultural Holdings Act--all without distinction have been involved in a general calamity.'' The two most prominent causes assigned for the depression were bad seasons and foreign competition, aggravated by the increased cost of production and the heavy losses of live stock. Abundant evidence was forthcoming as to the extent to which agriculture had been injuriously affected ``by an unprecedented succession of bad seasons.'' As regards the pressure of foreign competition, it was stated to be greatly in excess of the anticipations of the supporters, and of the apprehensions of the opponents of the repeal of the Corn Laws. Whereas formerly the farmer was to some extent compensated by a higher price for a smaller yield, in recent years he had had to compete with an unusually large supply at greatly reduced prices. On the other hand, he had enjoyed the advantage of an extended supply of feeding-stuffs---such as maize, linseedcake and cotton-cake---and of artificial manures imported from abroad. The low price of agricultural produce, beneficial though it might be to the general community, had lessened the ability of the land to bear the proportion of taxation which had heretofore been imposed upon it. The legislative outcome of the findings of this royal commission was the Agricultural Holdings Act 1883, a measure which continued in force in its entirety till 1901, when a new act came into operation.

The apparently hopeless outlook for corn-growing compelled farmers to cast about for some other means of subsistence, and to rely more than they had hitherto done upon the possibilities of stock-breeding. It was in particular the misfortunes of the later 'seventies that gave the needed fillip to that branch of stock-farming concerned with the production of milk, butter and cheese, and from this period may be said to date the revival of the dairying industry, which received a powerful impetus through the introduction of the centrifugal cream separator, and was fostered by the British Dairy Farmers' Association (formed in 1875). The generally wet character of the seasons in 1879 and the two or three years following was mainly responsible for the high prices of meat, so that the supplies of fresh beef and mutton from Australia which now began to arrive found a ready market, and the trade in imported fresh meat which was thus commenced has practically continued to expand ever since. The great losses arising from spoilt hay crops served to stimulate experimental inquiry into the method of preserving green fodder known as ensilage, with the result that the system eventually became successfully incorporated in the ordinary routine of agricultural practice. A contemporaneous effort in the direction of drying hay by artificial means led to nothing of practical importance. By 1882 the cry as to land going out of cultivation became loud and general, and the migration of the rural population into the towns in search of work continued unchecked (see below, Agricultural Population) . In 1883 foot-and-mouth disease was terribly rampant amongst the herds and flocks of Great Britain, and was far more prevalent than it has ever been since. It was about this time that the first experiments were made (in Germany) with basic slag, a material which had hitherto been regarded as a worthless by-product of steel manufacture. A year or two later field trials were begun in England, with the final result that basic slag has become recognized as a valuable source of phosphorus for growing crops, and is now in constant demand for application to the soil as a fertilizer.

In 1883 the veterinary department of the Privy Council--which had been constituted in 1865 when the country was ravaged by cattle plague---was abolished by order in council, and the ``Agricultural Department'' was substituted, but no alteration was effected in the work of the department, so far as it related to animals. In 1889 the Board of Agriculture (for Great Britain) was formed under an act of parliament of that year (see AGRICULTURE, BOARD OF). The election took place in the same year (1889) of the first county councils, and the allotment to them of various sums of money under the Local Taxation (Customs and Excise) Act 1890 enabled local provision to be made for the promotion of technical instruction in agriculture (see below, Agricultural Education.) It was about this time that the value of a mixture of lime and sulphate of copper (bouillie bordelaise), sprayed in solution upon the growing plants, came to be recognized as a check upon the ravages of potato disease.

The general experience of the decade of the 'eighties was that of disappointing summers, harsh winters, falling prices, declining rents and the shrinkage of land values. It is true that one season of the series, that of 1887, was hot and droughty, but the following summer was exceedingly wet. Nevertheless, the decade closed more hopefully than it opened, and found farmers taking a keener interest in grass land, in live stock and in dairying. Cattle-breeders did well in 1889, but sheep-breeders fared better; on the other hand, owing to receding prices, corn growers were more disheartened than ever. With the incoming of the last decade of the century there seemed to be some justifiable hopes of the dawn of better times, but they were speedily doomed to disappointment. In 1891 excessively heavy autumn rains washed the arable soils to such an extent that the next season's corn crops were below average. Wheat in particular was a poor crop in 1892, and the low yield was associated with falling prices due to large imports. The hay crop was very inferior, and in some cases it was practically ruined. This gave a stimulus to the trade in imported hay, which rose from 61,237 tons in 1892 to 263,050 tons in 1893, and despite some large home-grown crops in certain subsequent years (1897 and 1898) this expansion has never since been wholly lost.

The misfortunes of 1892 proved to be merely a preparation for the disasters of 1893, in which year occurred the most destructive drought within living memory. Its worst effects were seen upon the light land farms of England, and so deplorable was the position that a royal commission on agricultural depression was appointed in September of that year under the chairmanship of Mr Shaw Lefevre (afterwards Lord Eversley). Thus, within the last quarter of the 19th century--and, as a matter of fact, only fourteen years apart--two royal commissions on agriculture were appointed, the one in a year of memorable flood, 1879, and the other in a year of disastrous drought, 1893. The report of the commission of 1893 was issued in March 1896. Amongst its chief recommendations were those relating to amendments in the Agricultural Holdings Acts, and to tithe rent-charge, railway rates, damage by game, sale of adulterated products, and sale of imported goods (meat, for example) as home produce. Two legislative enactments arose out of the work of this commission. In the majority report it was stated ``that, in order to place agricultural lands in their right position as compared with other ratable properties, it is essential that they should be assessed to all local rates in a reduced proportion of their ratable value.'' The Agricultural Rates Act 1896 gave effect to this recommendation. Its objects were to relieve agricultural land from half the local rates, and to provide the means of making good out of imperial funds the deficiency in local taxation caused thereby. It was provided that the act should continue in force only till the 31st of March 1902, but a further act in 1901 extended the period by four years, and in 1905 its operation was extended to the 31st of March 1910. The other measure arising out of the report of the royal commission of 1893 was the Agricultural Holdings Act 1900. This was an amending act and not a consolidating act; consequently it had to be read as if incorporated into the already existing acts. As affecting agricultural practice there were three noteworthy improvements in respect of the making of which, without the consent of or notice to his landlord, a tenant might claim compensation---(1) the consumption on the holding ``by horses, other than those regularly employed on the holding,'' of corn, cake or other feeding-stuff not produced on the holding; (2) the ``consumption on the holding by cattle, sheep, or pigs, or by horses other than those regularly employed on the holding, of corn proved by satisfactory evidence to have been produced and consumed on the holding''; (3) ``laying down temporary pasture with clover, grass, lucerne, sainfoin or other seeds sown more than two years prior to the determination of the tenancy.'' A further act was passed in 1906 (the Agricultural Holdings Act 1906) which improved the tenant's position in respect of freedom of cropping, disposal of produce and compensation for disturbance.

After 1894, in which year the brilliant prospects of a bountiful harvest were ultimately extinguished by untimely and heavy rains, all the remaining seasons of the closing decade of the 19th century were dominated by drought. A fact that was amply illustrated, moreover, is that the period of incidence of a drought is not less important than its duration, and the same is true of abnormal rainfall. A spring drought, a summer drought, an autumn drought, each has its distinctive characteristics in so far as the effect upon the crops is concerned. The hot drought of 1893 extended over the spring and summer months, but there was an abundant rainfall in the autumn; correspondingly there was an unprecedentedly bad yield of corn and hay crops, but a moderately fair yield of the main root crops (turnips and swedes). In 1899 the drought became most intense in the autumn after the corn crops had been harvested, but during the chief period, of growth of the root crops; correspondingly the corn crops of that year rank very well amongst the crops of the decade, but the yield of turnips and swedes was the worst on record. It is quite possible for a hot dry season to be associated with a large yield of corn, provided the drought is confined to a suitable period, as was the case in 1896 and still more so in 1898; the English wheat crops in those years were probably the biggest in yield per acre that had been harvested since 1868, which is always looked back upon as a remarkable year for wheat. The drought of 1898 was interrupted by copious rains in June, and these falling on a warm soil led to a rapid growth of grass and, as measured by yield per acre, an exceedingly heavy crop of hay.

With the exceptions of 1891 and 1894, every year in the period 1891-1900 was stricken by drought. The two meteorological events of the decade which will probably live longest in the recollection were, however, the terrible drought of 1893, resulting in a fodder famine in the succeeding winter, and the severe frost of ten weeks' duration at the beginning of 1895. Between these two occurrences came the disastrous decline in the value of grain in the autumn of 1894, when the weekly average price of English wheat fell to the record minimum of 17s. 6d. per imperial quarter. As a consequence, the extent of land devoted to wheat in the British Isles receded in 1895 to less than 1 1/2 million acres. The year 1903 was memorable for a very heavy rainfall, comparable though not equal in its disastrous effects to that of 1879. Successful trials of sulphate of copper solution as a means of destroying charlock in corn crops took place in the years 1898-1900. Charlock is a most persistent cruciferous weed, but if sprayed when young with the solution named it is killed, the corn plants being uninjured. In 1901 the formation of the Agricultural Organization Society marked the first systematic attempt to organize co-operation among the farmers of Great Britain. In the subsequent years the principle, which had already made great progress in Ireland, began to obtain a hold in England and Wales, where, in 1906, there were 145 local co-operative societies with a turn-over of

Amongst legislative measures of importance to agriculturists mention should be made, in addition to those that have been referred to, of the Tithe Rent-charge Recovery Act 1891, which transfers the liability for payment of tithe from the occupier to the owner. In the same year was passed the Markets and Fairs (Weighing of Cattle) Act. The object of the Small Holdings Act 1892 was to facilitate the acquisition of small agricultural holdings. It provided that a county council might acquire any suitable land, with the object of allotting from one to fifty acres, or, if more than fifty acres, of an annual value not exceeding L. 50, to persons who desired to buy, and would themselves cultivate, the holdings. If, owing to proximity to a town or otherwise, the prospective value were too high, the council might hire such land for the purpose of letting it. (See ALLOTMENTS AND SMALL HOLDINGS for this and other acts.) The Fertilizers and Feeding Stuffs