SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. 59 



preparative manure for a wheat crop. He produces information 

 as to the extraordinary value, in land adapted for its growth, 

 of lucerne. He is equally alive to the merits of the great or red 

 clover. Still, for a century and more after Hartlib's time, 

 these artificial grasses were rarely cultivated, as we may learn 

 from Arthur Young's Tours. But Hartlib does not seem 

 to have foreseen what a change would be made in agriculture, 

 as soon as winter roots were substituted for fallows. 



My author is very alive to the great fluctuations in the price 

 of corn during his experience, and what he says will be fully 

 borne out when I come to speak of the price of grain during 

 the period before me. The farmer he says is ruined by ex- 

 cessive cheapness, the people are half-starved in dear years. 

 He therefore recommends the garnering of grain from harvest to 

 harvest. He says he has known barley sold at Northampton at 

 6d. a bushel, and within a year at 5^. in the same place ; wheat 

 at 35. 6d. in London, and within a year at 15^. the bushel 

 in the same place ; and he appears to be aware of Gregory 

 King's law of prices, when he observes (p. 202), ' It is found 

 by experience, that when there is but a little corn too much 

 to sell in a market, then the price falleth too extremely ; also 

 if there be never so little a quantity too small, then the price 

 is enhanced too much in all conscience/ Hartlib has heard of 

 the use of silos for preserving grain, but he thinks the English 

 climate too damp for the experiment. 



Among the grievances of which Hartlib complains, one is 

 the uncertainty of fines in copyholds and customary tenures, 

 which he alleges constantly left the tenant at the mercy of 

 the landlord; and the other is the enormous number of dovecots 

 or pigeon-houses constantly kept by men who have no land, 

 says that there are constantly as many as three of these 

 nuisances in every parish, and he believes that these birds 

 devour six million quarters of different kinds of grain annually. 

 I believe that the number of the dovecots is an exaggeration, 

 and that the waste could have been nothing equal to the 

 amount given ; but they were a great nuisance, and it is 



