FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES. 51 



Fitzherbert writes for purchasers of cattle as well as for 

 breeders. Plough-oxen, he says, should be young and not 

 gouty, and with hair and extremities sound. Kine and oxen for 

 feeding should be young, should have a smooth coat, have a habit 

 of licking themselves, have a whole mouth, and want no teeth. 

 Oxen unfit for plough will often do well for feeding. Further, 

 cattle should have a broad ridge, a thick hide, and be loose- 

 skinned, for if his skin stick hard to his ribs the ox will not feed. 

 Handle fat oxen and kine and see that they be soft on the fore- 

 crop, behind the shoulder, on the hindermost rib, upon the huck- 

 bone, and at the nache ' by the tail. There are other signs to 

 prove that fat. cattle are well-tallowed. Take heed, however, 

 the author adds, where thou buyest lean cattle or fat, of whom, 

 and where it was fed. For if thou buy out of a better ground 

 than thou hast thyself, that cattle will not live with thee. But 

 also look that there be no manner of sickness among the cattle 

 in that township or pasture that thou buyest thy cattle out of. 

 For if there be any murrain or ' long sought ' it is great jeopardy, 

 for a beast may take sickness ten or twelve days or more ere it 

 appear on him. 



The husbandmen of the fifteenth century, and indeed for 

 some time afterwards, called all cattle-diseases by the general 

 name of murrain. But it is clear that Fitzherbert understood 

 by this term a special disease. The symptoms are a swelling 

 of the head, enlargement and running at the eyes, and frothiness 

 at the mouth. These symptoms are fatal. The beast will eat 

 no more, and will die shortly. * Skin him at once, and bury 

 the carcase in a deep pit, that no dog may get at it, or the 

 smell any way reach the rest of the herd. Do not carry the 

 skin home for the -same reason, but have it at once to the 

 tanner's.' ' It is a practice, and a very charitable one,' he con- 

 tinues, ' to put the head of the dead beast on a long pole, and 

 set it in the hedge by the highway as a warning that there is 

 disease among the cattle of the township.' He suggests bleed- 

 ing the sound cattle in both jugulars, as a preventive, and states 

 that in his opinion the expedient is valuable. 



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