“ In 1804 Livingston withdrew from public life, and after a year of travel in Europe returned to New York, where he promoted various improvements in agriculture. He did much to introduce the use of gypsum as a fertilizer, and published an Essay on Sheep (1809) . He was long interested in the problem of steam navigation; before he went to France he received from the state of New York a monopoly of steam navigation on the waters of the state and assisted in the experiments of his brother-in-law, John Stevens ”