Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mills, John (d.1784?)
MILLS, JOHN (d. 1784?), writer on agriculture, was in Paris in 1743 for the purpose of bringing out, in concert with Sellius, a German historian, a French edition of Ephraim Chambers's ‘Cyclopædia;’ but Lebreton, the printer commissioned by him to manage the undertaking, cheated him out of the subscription money, assaulted him, and ultimately obtained a license in his own name. This was the origin of the famous ‘Encyclopédie.’ Mills, unable to obtain redress, returned to England, and Sellius died at Charenton Lunatic Asylum in 1787. In 1763 Mills continued, completed, and dedicated to the Earl of Bute ‘Memoirs of the Court of Augustus,’ by Thomas Blackwell the younger [q. v.] Finding his true vocation as a writer on agriculture, he translated in 1762 Duhamel du Monceau's ‘Practical Treatise of Husbandry.’ In 1766 he published an ‘Essay on the Management of Bees;’ in 1770 a translation from the Latin of G. A. Gyllenberg's ‘Natural and Chemical Elements of Agriculture;’ in 1772 an ‘Essay on the Weather’ (translated into Dutch in 1772), and ‘Essays, Moral, Philosophical, and Political’ (anonymous, but advertised under his name); and in 1776 a ‘Treatise on Cattle.’ His chief work, ‘A New System of Practical Husbandry,’ in 5 vols., appeared in 1767. It was the earliest complete treatise on all branches of agriculture, and contains the first mention of the potato as grown in fields. It combines the results of the experience and observations of such writers as Evelyn, Duhamel, John Worlidge, and Jethro Tull, and is highly commended by Donaldson, who gives an abstract of its contents. Mills was a warm advocate of small farms. In 1766 he was elected a F.R.S., and he was the first foreign associate of the French Agricultural Society, on whose list his name, with London as his residence, appears from 1767 to 1784, in which year he probably died. One John Mills died at Glanton, Northumberland, 8 Nov. 1786 (Gent. Mag. 1786, pt. ii. p. 1002).
[J. Donaldson's Agricultural Biography, 1854, p. 51 *; Mémoires Secrets de la République de Lettres, v. 340; Brit. Mus. Cat.]