CHAPTER XVI. 



THE PRICE OF LIVE STOCK. 



THE same kind of stock which is now kept on an English 

 farm was kept five or six hundred years ago. Oxen and cows, 

 horses, pigs, sheep, and poultry were almost invariably reared, 

 though of course, just as now, lands which were either not 

 available for sheep farming, or were more profitably occupied 

 in the manufacture of dairy produce, maintained no sheep. 

 The two great objects of the English farmer in the time before 

 me were the growth of corn and wool ; corn because it was 

 absolutely necessary for life, as the people derived no sup- 

 plies, in any notable degree, from foreign countries; wool, 

 because for certain reasons, mostly, as I have elsewhere stated, 

 social and political, this country possessed a practical monopoly 

 in the production of this essential material for clothing. Pigs, 

 too, were the most important kind of animal food. The 

 necessity for using salted meat during a moiety of the year led 

 our forefathers to breed pigs largely, since no meat it appears 

 takes salt more readily, or preserves its nutritive properties 

 after curing, so fully as pork. And besides, poultry, to judge 

 from the price, and from the frequent recurrence of poultry 

 rents in the rentals of estates, must have been very common ; 

 so that the patriotic wish of the Bearnese king, that every 

 peasant should have his fowl in the pot, was probably verified in 

 the period before me. A market also was found for capons and 

 geese. Ducks were comparatively rare, and pigeon-houses, kept 

 on most manorial estates, were no doubt a nuisance and a wrong, 



