ANCIENT AGRICULTURAL LITERATURE. 189 



without system, inaccurate, often wasteful, but full of re- 

 source. They saw their produce dwindle, and their country 

 become more and more dependent on importation for daily 

 bread ; and, with every temptation in price, found no re- 

 medy. When our clays struck work, we resorted to a ge- 

 neral system of enclosures, which enabled us to give them 

 rest without entire abandonment ; and we applied all our 

 energy to obtain the wheat and beans, which they had fur- 

 nished to us, from a description of land which every pre- 

 vious generation had considered to be wholly unsuited to 

 such produce. We ransacked earth and sea, home and 

 abroad, for adventitious manures. No doubt we have had 

 great advantages. Any one who casts his eye over the list 

 of British imports and exports, will recognise at once an 

 enormous balance remaining with us of matters resoluble 

 ultimately into manure. Indeed the account is almost all 

 one way. In our hardwares and crockery we export no 

 elements of fertility, and our exports of textile fabrics are 

 but a small fraction in weight of the raw material which 

 we had previously imported. We have to look far back for 

 the period when we regularly exported grain, and when 

 our imports of wool failed to balance, or nearly so, our ex- 

 ports of manufactured woollens. To set against all this 

 there is great waste ; but even the sea makes us some 

 compensation, in the shape of fish and wrack, for the filthy 

 contributions which our rivers pour continually into its 

 bosom. The emerald fringe, which surrounds all our 

 towns and most of our villages, attests the general balance 

 and its application. The suburban lands, which are brought 

 to the acme of fertility, as far as that can be attained by 

 extra-manuring, form a very appreciable portion of the 

 surface of England ; besides which, lands lying at distances, 

 varying with the facilities of carriage or back-carriage, 

 assist in sweeping off the fertilizing matters which accu- 

 mulate in our great towns. There is no evidence in the 

 ancient writers of any such process. There can be no doubt 

 that, after the conquest of Carthage, Italy imported largely, 



