page_title: John Mills (encyclopedist)
section_title: A practical Treatise of Husbandry, 1759
hierarchical_section_title: John Mills (encyclopedist) / Work / A practical Treatise of Husbandry, 1759
caption_attribution_description: English: Treatise of Husbandry, 1759, Plate I
context_page_description: John Mills was an English writer on agriculture, translator and editor. Mills and Gottfried Sellius are known for being the first to prepare a French edition of Ephraim Chambers's Cyclopaedia for publication in 1745, which eventually resulted in the Encyclopédie published in France between 1751 and 1772.
  As writer on agriculture, Mills is credited for publishing the earliest complete treatise on all branches of agriculture. His chief work, A New System of Practical Husbandry, in 5 volumes, appeared in 1767. It combines the results of the experience and observations of such writers as Evelyn, Duhamel, John Worlidge, and Jethro Tull, and was highly commended. Mills was a warm advocate of small farms.
context_section_description: Mills first serious work in the field of agriculture, was the translation of Duhamel du Monceau's Practical Treatise of Husbandry, from the French. The full title of this translation is: 
  A practical Treatise of Husbandry: Wherein are contained many useful and valuable Experiments and Observations in the New Husbandry, collected during a Series of Years, by the celebrated, M. Duhamel Du Monceau, Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences dt Paris, Fellow of the Royal Society, London, &c. Also the most approved Practice of the best English Farmers, in the old Method of Husbandry. With Copper-Plates of several new and useful Instruments., 4tO. 16s. Whiston, &c.
  Duhamel's work originally consisted of five volumes, which were published at different times. Mills didn't translation this work as a whole. He translated only such experiments as seemed to him most instructive in the then modern practice of farming, either according to the old or new method. Mills explained in the preface, that "Duhamel and his correspondents have set the world an example which has long been wanted, and greatly desired by all who have the good of their country at heart, and are in the least sensible of the importance of Agriculture. They have given us a series of experiments in this most useful art, continued for several years together, with accuracy and judgment, and related in a clear, distinct, manner."
  According to Mills the work of Duhamel is noted for it empirical origin. Theory alone can avail but little in agriculture, Mills declared, referring to the following observation by Francis Home: 
  Agriculture does not take its rise originally from reason, but from fact and experience. It is a branch of natural philosophy, and can only be improved from a knowledge of facts, as they happen in nature. It is by attending to these facts that the other branches of natural philosophy have been so much advanced during these two last ages. Medicine has attained its present per section, only from the history of diseases and cafes delivered down. Chemistry is now reduced to a regular system, by the means of experiments made either by chance or design. But where are the experiments in Agriculture to answer this purpose ? When I look round for such, I can find few or none. There then lies the impediment in the way of Agriculture. Books in that art, we are not deficient in: but the book which we want, is a book of experiments.
  Only after reading the three first volumes of Experiments published by M. Duhamel, Francis Home declared: "They are distinct, exact, conclusive so far as they have gone, and stand a model for experiments in Agriculture. What a shame for Great Britain, where Agriculture is so much cultivated, to leave its exact value to be determined by foreigners!"
caption: Treatise of Husbandry, 1759, Plate I
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