SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. 47 



to be dropped into the hole. In this way, a single quart of 

 wheat or other grain will set an acre ; and Markham states 

 that if the ground is properly prepared, and by deep spade 

 labour, the produce is beyond all experience both in quantity 

 and quality. It may be doubted however, he adds, whether 

 the labour, excessive in this case, is not too great for the 

 produce. 



Markham mentions several different kinds of wheat, viz. 

 whole straw, great brown Pollard, white Pollard, organ or 

 red, flaxen and chilter wheat. The first of these has we are 

 told a straw full of pith, and was therefore much esteemed for 

 thatching. Now he says it is quite worth the husbandman's 

 pains, as he will find by experience, to sort out the fullest and 

 largest corns for seed, even though this has to be done by 

 hand-picking. He is also quite alive to the fact that it is 

 expedient to buy seed, and that good seed procured from a 

 harvest reaped on inferior soils will thrive far better on a good 

 soil than its own produce will. The first two named kinds of 

 wheat are of large grains, the others are smaller in size and 

 fitter for poorer soils. There is nothing like the same variety 

 in the selection of rye seed. 



There are, he says, three kinds of barley : ' common, hairy 

 long ears with two ranks of corn, narrow, close and upright ; 

 spike or battledore, being a large ear, with two ranks of corn, 

 broad, flat, and in fashion of a battledore ; and a third called 

 bear barley, or barley big, being a large four-square ear, like 

 unto an ear of wheat.' Of these the first is the commonest in 

 England, the last universally grown in Ireland and France. 

 He advises that seed-barley should be hand-picked, and that 

 great care be taken that no oats get mixed up with the seed. 

 There is no difficulty in selecting the seed of leguminous plants. 



Of oats, Markham enumerates the following : the great long 

 white, the great long black, the cut, and the skegg. Of these 

 the first two arc far the best, the last the worst, and only to 

 be sown on the worst soils where nothing else of better use 

 will grow. It is probably like the fen oats of which I find 



