392 ARTICLES EMPLOYED IN AGRICULTURE. 



deficiency of direct solar heat. The price of salt is highest in 

 1572-4. Now in these years, the highest wheat price at the 

 end of the harvest year of 1572 is 28.9. 6d. t the maximum in 

 1573 is 305-. 8<, at the beginning of 1574 it is 28^. 4^. 



Most of the places from which the prices of salt have been 

 derived for the period before me were accessible by water 

 carriage. They are mainly Cambridge, Oxford, and London. 

 The first and last were easily reached by water. But it 

 appears, as I stated in my earlier volumes, that the navigation 

 of the Thames did not in the middle ages, or indeed till 

 comparatively recent times, extend beyond Maidenhead. We 

 may expect therefore that salt would be dearer in Oxford than 

 it is in the other two places, especially after the Reformation, 

 when the roads went out of repair. This will be found to be the 

 case, the difference of price at Oxford and Cambridge being in 

 the post-Reformation period about 30 per cent, against the 

 former. Before this time there is indeed but little evidence 

 about the price of salt in Oxford, or in its immediate neigh- 

 bourhood, but there is no more marked difference between the 

 price of Cambridge and London salt on the one hand, and 

 that purchased at places as remote from river and sea naviga- 

 tion, than the cheap transit of the fifteenth century would add 

 to the cost. On the whole, salt is bought most cheaply, as 

 might be anticipated, at the towns on the south-west coast, as 

 Sidmouth and Dartmouth. 



I stated above, as before, that rock salt was not quarried or 

 otherwise worked for the manufacture of a condiment, and for 

 culinary purposes, as far as could be discerned. But our fore- 

 fathers used rock salt generally, as I believe it is now used, to 

 put into pigeon-houses, though possibly for cattle to lick. The 

 accounts of the Cambridge Colleges, especially King's, supply 

 information as to the purchase of salt stones. There are twenty- 

 one such entries between 1438 and 1579, and they might have 

 been more, were it not that I merely quoted them as illustrations, 

 to be found among the sundry articles. Two are bought in the 

 first year at $\d. and %d. ; one in 1447 at is. $d. ; one in 1452 



