[It was scarcely a reproach to the Wiltshire husbandmen to be far behind those of more enlightened counties, when, in the seat of learning, where the mental faculties of the students ought to have been continually exercised and cultivated, and not merely occupied in learning useless Greek and Latin, the “Oxford scholars” followed, rather than led, the fashion. Agricultural societies were then unknown, farmers had little communication with distant districts, and consequently knew nothing of the practice of other places; rents were low, and the same families continued in the farms from generation to generation, pursuing the same routine of Agriculture which their fathers and grandfathers had pursued “time out of mind”. In the days of my own boyhood, nearly seventy years ago, I spent some time at a solitary farmhouse in North Wiltshire, with a grandfather and his family, and can remember the various occupations and practices of the persons employed in the dairy, and on the grazing and corn lands. I never saw either a book or newspaper in the house; nor were any accounts of the farming kept.—J. B.] The Devonshire men were the earliest improvers. I heard Oliver Cromwell, Protector, at dinner at Hampton Court, 1657 or 8, tell the Lord Arundell of Wardour and the Lord Fitzwilliams that he had been in all the counties of England, and that the Devonshire husbandry was the best: and at length we have obtained a good deal of it, which is now well known and need not to be rehearsed. But William Scott, of Hedington, a very understanding man in these things, told me that since 1630 the fashion of husbandry in this country had been altered three times over, still refining. Mr. Bishop, of Merton, first brought into the south of Wiltshire the improvement by burn-beking or Denshiring, about 1639. He learnt it in Flanders; it is very much used in this parish, and their neighbours doe imitate them: they say ’tis good for the father, but naught for the son, by reason it does so weare out the heart of the land. [The reader will find many observations of this nature, and on analogous subjects, in the manuscript, which it has not been thought desirable to print. Among the rest are several pages from John Norden’s “Surveyor’s Dialogue”, containing advice and directions respecting agriculture, of which Aubrey says, “though they are not of Wiltshire, they will do no hurt here; and, if my countrymen know it not, I wish they might learn”.—J. B.] The wheate and bread of this county, especially South Wilts, is but indifferent; that of the Vale of White Horse is excellent. King Charles II. when he lay at Salisbury, in his progresse, complained that he found there neither good bread nor good beer. But for the latter, ’twas the fault of the brewer not to boil it well; for the water and the mault there are as good as any in England.