Perhaps few people realise what Sheep and Turnips have meant to English history; yet Sheep casued the First Agrarian Revolution, since, between 1450 and 1700 more money could be made out of selling wool and woven cloth than through the cultivation of worn-out fields. And by 1750 the turnip, as a forage crop, was brought into field cultivation; this meant that cattle could be stall-fed, as in England they had never been before, throughout the winter; thue producing manure, which was used to enrich the soil. The new culture necessitated the "Enclosure" of land, and this was the Second Agrarian Revolution.

Of Arthur Young, who was born in 1741 and died in 1820, the King said: "Mr. Young, I am more obliged to you than to any man in my Dominions." As a farmer, Arthur Young failed - from lack of capital and love of experiment - but he bacame one of the founders of the first Secretary of the Board of Agriculture, and "the greatest writer on english Agriculture".

Without any training he made himself a Fellow of the Royal Society. Unaided genius made of him a man who, as the "Evening Standard" has said in a recent article, "taught the world how to farm, introduced science into the farming industry, and stampeded the industry into enthusiasm . . . turning waste lands into rich pastures and causing the harvest to be multiplied. He also raised the Yeomanry, and his health was drunk after that of the King."

miss Defries, herself a Madalist of the Royal Horticultural Society, has written an entertaining book which presents Arthur Young's life and writings against a lively background of the times, and does valuable service to a reputation - at one time famous in Europe and America - which in France has long stood high but which in england has been unjustly neglected by the general public. Arthur Young's message is particularly important to the present generation.