Jethro Tull and His Views on Manure

While reading the list of Top 100 Ebooks downloaded from Project Gutenberg on July 4, 2026 I noticed that number 60 was  Charles Morton Aikman's Manures and the principles of manuring. In a list that begins with Moby Dick and includes classics by Dostoevsky, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Thomas Mann, Chesterton and Sir Walter Scott, a book about manure seemed quite surprising, especially when it has reached #60 on the chart.

Jehtro Tull in 1973, the year I saw them.

So I decided to peruse its contents. Early on I found an entry about a fellow named Jethro Tull. My only connection with this name had been through the popular British rock band that emerged in the late 60's and whom I later saw at Ohio U on their Thick as a Brick Tour. 

Did the group take its name from the character in Aikman's manure compendium? As it turns out, the answer is yes. Rock band Jethro Tull took its name from the 18th-century English agronimist Jethro Tull (1674–1741), who pioneered innovations like the seed drill that helped spark the British Agricultural Revolution.

Trivia: When Ian Anderson's band was starting out they weren't that good yet so they kept changing the name of the band in order to get re-booked at places they'd already played. Someone on the staff of their booking agent, who was a historian, suggested. the name Jethro Tull at this time because it was the name they were using when they landed a Thursday night residency at London's famous Marquee Club.

The original Jethro Tull developed a theory about the importance of tilling. The more thoroughly one tilled the soil, the more luxurient the crops would be. 

He believed plant food consisted of the particles of the soil. These particles, however, had to be rendered very tiny before they become available for the plant, which would absorb them by means of its rootlets. This pulverisation of the soil goes on in nature independently of the farmer, but only very slowly, and the farmer has therefore to hasten it on by means of tillage operations. The more efficiently these operations are carried on, the more abundant will the supply.  

According to Aikman, Tull introduced and advocated the system of horse-hoe husbandry. This theory was suggested to him by the custom, which he had noticed on the Continent, of growing vines in rows, and hoeing the intervals between these rows from time to time. The excellent results which followed this mode of cultivation induced him to adopt it in England for his farm crops. 

While Tull's theory was based on principles at heart thoroughly sound, he was carried away by his personal success into drawing unwarrantable deductions. Thus he came to the conclusion that crop rotation was unnecessary, provided that a thorough system of tillage was carried out. He was also persuaded that manures could be entirely dispensed with under his new system of cultivation, for the true function of all manures is to aid in the pulverization of the soil by fermentation. We later learned this was a mistaken notion.   

Another thing Tull did was drill holes into the soil and plant at a specific depth. This approach yielded better results than the popular method called broadcasting, that is, flinging the seeds out in all directions. How interesting that today we still use this term, but apply it to media instead of farming. Of course the word still applies to seeds of a different nature. 

It strikes me that writers and farmers have more in common than we sometimes realize. Both spend much of their lives preparing the ground. The farmer tills the soil, plants carefully, and waits. The writer cultivates minds, sows ideas, and waits. Not every seed germinates. Not every field produces an abundant harvest. But every now and then an idea takes root, grows quietly beneath the surface, and changes someone's life.

Whether we're farmers, musicians, teachers, or writers, we're all in the seed-sowing business. We don't control the weather or the harvest. We simply do our best to plant something worth growing.

Jethro Tull was wrong about manure, but he was right about one thing: the condition of the soil matters. Whether we're growing wheat or wisdom, fertile ground is still where the harvest begins.