248 NATURAL HISTORY 
cattle that had grown fat in summer, and were not 
killed for winter use, were turned out soon after 
Michaelmas to shift as they could through the dead 
months, so that no fresh meat could be had in 
winter or spring. Hence the marvellous account 
of the vast stores of salted flesh found in the larder 
of the eldest Spencer,* in the days of Edward the 
Second, even so late in the spring as the 3d of May. 
It was from magazines like these that the turbulent 
barons supported in idleness their riotous swarms 
of retainers, ready for any disorder or mischief. 
But agriculture has now arrived at such a pitch of 
perfection, that our best and fattest meats are kill- 
ed in the winter; and no man needs eat salted 
flesh, unless he prefer it, that has money to buy 
fresh. 
One cause of this distemper might be, no doubt, 
the quantity of wretched fresh and salt fish con- 
sumed by the commonalty at all seasons, as well as 
in Lent, which our poor now would hardly be per- 
suaded to touch. 
The use of linen changes, shirts or shifts, in the 
room of sordid or filthy woollen, long worn next 
the skin, is a matter of neatness comparatively 
modern, but must prove a great means of prevent- 
ing cutaneous ails. At this very time, woollen 
instead of linen prevails among the poorer Welsh, 
who are subject to eruptions. 
The plenty of good wheaten bread that now is 
found among all ranks of people in the south, in- 
stead of that miserable sort which used in old days 
to be made of barley or beans, may contribute not 
* Viz., six hundred bacons, eighty carcasses of beef, and six 
hundred muttons, , 
