ARTICLES EMPLOYED IN AGRICULTURE. 391 



The same conclusion is again assisted, if not verified, by the 

 great exaltation of the price of salt in wet summers, and the 

 consequent deficiency of what I may call solar fertility. Thus 

 the principal dearth of the fifteenth century (we might call one 

 year, 1438, a year of famine) is characterised by a high price of 

 salt, in 1437-9. The same facts will be found to follow other 

 years, though sometimes the exalted price is discovered in the 

 year which comes after the corn dearth, as though the value of 

 the article rose as the stocks became low, and sometimes in 

 the year before, as though the mischievous rainfall was early in 

 its influence 1 . 



The great amount of solar fertility which characterised the 

 fifteenth century is shown in the low price of salt. Between 

 1261-1350, the average price was $s. \d. ; during the next fifty 

 it is 6s. ^d. the quarter. The fifteenth-century average for the 

 first decade is not much less, 6s. 2j</., and for the first six years 

 it is nearly 7^. ^d. But it falls rapidly, and though it never 

 reaches in any decade, or even in more than six several years, 

 the average which is taken from the time before the great 

 plague, the general average is but a little in excess of that 

 which is gathered from the whole period, 1261-1400, viz. 4.$-. $d. 



The rise in the price of salt during the 42 years, 1541-1582, 

 is closely analogous to that of other prices. It is not indeed 

 quite five to two, but it is only a fraction below this ratio, and 

 it is probable that the interruption of the salt trade between 

 England and Guienne, which was the subject of diplomacy 

 between England and France, may have been the principal 

 cause of the high prices which ruled, when other values were 

 not similarly exalted, between 1521-40. The dearest years of 

 the fourteenth century were synchronous with the war which 

 followed on the rupture of the peace of Bretigni. Still, the 

 dominant cause of an exalted price of salt in England was a 



1 I do not venture, at this part of the enquiry, to do more than indicate in a note, that 

 assuming, as one can from the evidence, that the price of salt is exalted by wet summers, 

 the period of the year in which the rainfall was greatest would be traceable in the 

 prices of dear years of salt, compared with dear years of corn. 



