350 FODDER AND HAY. 



than ^5. I have no means of identifying any other locality 

 except that of Ziftele, that is, Iffley near Oxford, a return for 

 the sale of grass from this locality being given under the year 

 1353. Here the grass must have been that which grew on the 

 meadows lying between the hill on which the church and 

 village are built and the Oxfordshire bank of the Isis, Below 

 the mill. 



It would be perhaps exceedingly difficult to determine which 

 of the grasses now employed for pasturage in England are of 

 native origin. I am certainly not botanist enough to affect 

 any judgment on the subject, and as far as I can learn from 

 persons whom I have consulted, it would not be possible to 

 arrive at a conclusion. In speaking of grasses of course I allude 

 to those called so scientifically. We know that most of the 

 more valuable clovers and similar plants have been introduced 

 in comparatively modern times. 



Hay is not very often sold in early times, but in the period 

 following on that which is comprised in these two volumes 

 there is abundant evidence of its price. It is very generally 

 sold by the load, (cart or wain load not being apparently dif- 

 ferent quantities,) by the mullo, stack, or rick, or by the 

 arconius, which, according to Ducange, has the same meaning. 

 These stacks must have varied so much in size that any esti- 

 mate taken from their price would be wholly delusive. The 

 load, however, was in all probability a fixed quantity, and the 

 ancestor of the modern quantity contained in a load of hay, 

 that is, 1 8 cwt. when the hay is old, and 19 cwt. when 

 new. 



If this quantity be taken as indicated by the word carectata, 

 or plaustrata of hay, the thirty-six entries of cartloads give an 

 average of y. 6\d. as the general price of a load, and would 

 imply, when compared with the average price of grass by the 

 acre as sold on the Holywell estate, that the first growth was 

 about two tons to the acre on an average of crops. Of course 

 such an estimate is problematical, but it is not by any means 

 improbable. If the entry given in vol. ii. p. 392. iv. implies 



