§ 6. SPECIAL FEATURES OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. POPULARITY OF AGRICULTURE—As the use of winter roots had been the special feature of the seventeenth century, so the feature of the eighteenth was the extension of artificial pasture and the increased use of clover, sainfoin, and rye-grass; not, of course, that these had been hitherto unknown, but now their seeds are regularly bought and used by any farmer who knew his business. At first, like all other processes of agriculture, the development was very slow and gradual, but it went on steadily nevertheless. A great stimulus to progress was given by the fact that the English gentlemen of the eighteenth century developed quite a passion for agriculture as a hobby, and it became a fashionable pursuit for all people of any means, citizens and professional men joining in it as a kind of bye-industry, as well as farmers and land-owners who made it their business. Arthur Young, the great agricultural writer of this century, declares that “the farming tribe is now made up of all classes, from a duke to an apprentice.” But two important mistakes were made in the eighteenth century, and they have not ceased to exist in the nineteenth, causing very largely the distress under which English agriculture has for some time been labouring. They are the mistakes of occupying too much land with insufficient capital, and of not keeping regular and detailed accounts. Still, between 1720 and 1760, progress was very rapid, and noble land-owners made great efforts to improve their estates, in {114} order thereby to raise their rents and increase their profits, in the hope of outdoing the great merchant princes who had now appeared upon the scene. They thus became in a way the pioneers of agricultural progress, the principal result of their efforts being seen in the increased number and quality of the stock now kept on farms.