FODDER AND HAY. 249 



been sold, as vetches are in modem times, in a green 

 state. 



Much more important is the price of grass by the acre. 

 Most of the earlier entries in the table given in vol. ii. p. 179 

 are derived from places on which it is not possible for me to 

 speak with absolute precision, and, as will be seen, the price is 

 exceedingly various ; even in the same years, though appa- 

 rently, as no note is given that the low-priced grass was 

 aftermath, the grass was of the same character, though not of 

 the same quality or quantity. But the prices given for grass 

 on the Oxford meadows situated on the west bank of the 

 Cherwell, from the precinct of the hospital of St. John, now 

 the site of the Grove and buildings of Magdalen College, are 

 very suggestive. I only regret that they are so scanty, for there 

 are only twenty-four entries between the years 1295 and 1388, 

 besides a few of the aftermath. 



Of these prices the highest is that of 1345, when eighteen 

 acres are sold at 9^., the lowest in 1388, when six were sold at 

 2s.8d. The rate is also high in the years 1308, 9,10, the average 

 during the whole period in which returns are supplied from the 

 Holy well meadows being 6s. ^\d. To mow and stack such pro- 

 duce would cost on an average about is. an acre more; and 

 taking the quarter of wheat at $s. iof^., the average for 140 

 years, the value of an acre of grass in the fourteenth century 

 on a site of great natural fertility, and in close proximity to 

 an important town, would be about equal to that of ten and 

 a half bushels of wheat. Again, the average price of twelve 

 entries of aftermath sold, most of which represent prices in 

 dear years, is is. 9^., that is, is worth about two and a half 

 bushels of wheat at the average price, and the whole of the 

 natural produce of the meadow, the first crop being stacked 

 as hay, the last fed on the spot, would amount to 95-. 6\d.^ or 

 about thirteen bushels of wheat. At present the proportional 

 produce of the same plots of land is in excess of this rate, 

 for taking the average price of wheat at 6os. the quarter, the 

 produce of these meadows is annually worth considerably more 



