Agricultural History Review, Volume 37 Part 2 (1989), pp. 144–156

It is now becoming recognized that the Scottish agricultural improvers had earlier antecedents than many of their English and Welsh counterparts. In this article, the work of William Cullen is analyzed to demonstrate the significance of his agricultural lectures at Edinburgh and Glasgow in the 1740s and 1750s, and to suggest the strength of links between the Scottish scientific community and agricultural improvement. Linked intellectually with figures such as Maxwell and Kames, Cullen conducted practical experiments on family farms and represented a striking examples that blend of practice and scientific abstraction which helped transform eighteenth-century Scottish farming through practical education. 

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