SNIPPET: The planting of crops in long, straight, equidistant rows, was believed by contemporaries to be one of the triumphs of 18th-century improved agriculture. Drill cultivation allowed more systemic sowing, care, management, and harvesting of crops than had been possible when there were sown broadcast (scattered) or grown on ridges. The Dublin Society strongly advocated the use of drill husbandry. One of its earliest publications was an edition of Jethro TULL's treatise on drill cultivation, and in 1771 the society grant-aided John Wynn BAKER's factory near Cellbridge, Co. Kildare, which manufactured drill implements. Mr. TULL (1674-1741), an English gentleman farmer, introduced many new farming methods. In his day, farmers sowed the seed by throwing it by hand. He regarded this practice as both wasteful and uncertain. So he invented a drill for boring straight rows of holes into which he dropped the seed. He also claimed that farmers could keep their soil fertile by frequent hoeing. His ideas were slowly adopted. Born in Berkshire, and educated at St. John's College, Oxford University, TULL traveled in France and Italy to observe farming methods and wrote "Horse-hoeing Husbandry," which was published in 1731. In Ireland, the planting of cereals in drills was common only on large farms, but by the 1830s the cultivation of potatoes in drills had become widespread. In 1852, J. HANSON of Doagh, Co. Antrim, patented a mechanical potato digger which operated by knocking potato tubers sideways out of raised drills. This was a major contribution to the mechanization of farming during the 19th century.