SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES. 6l 



let is a lease of twenty-one years, at what rent may be agreed, 

 but on improvement, i. e. at the end of the term, four persons are 

 to view the land, and if it be improved above the rent, that 

 the owner should pay the tenant the difference between the 

 agreed rent and the improved value. The writer considers 

 whether the adoption of this system would not lead to an extra- 

 ordinary and rapid development of agriculture in England. In 

 Flanders he tells us they sow about 2 Jibs, of turnip-seed to the 

 acre, and get a crop worth 8 an acre after all charges are 

 allowed. 



John Worlidge was a Hampshire gentleman living on the 

 borders of Sussex, near Petersfield. His work, Systema Agri- 

 cidtnrae> passed through many editions, and was an authority 

 for the last thirty years of the seventeenth and the first 

 quarter of the eighteenth centuries. I quote from the second 

 edition, published in 1675. The peculiarities of Worlidge's 

 style are, that he is exceedingly fond of Latin quotations, 

 and that he is evidently familiar with the current natural 

 philosophy of his time, which imagined 'a universal spirit 

 or Mercury, a universal sulphur, and a universal salt,' fertility 

 depending on a due admixture of these essential elements. 

 For this latter reason I conclude that he is so great a favourite 

 with Houghton, who frequently refers to his authority. 



Worlidge is a great advocate of enclosures as opposed to 

 common fields. He alleges that the popular system which he 

 condemns has great disadvantages in the discouragement of 

 anything like systematic or high farming, in the fact that it 

 leads to highways and paths being established in all directions 

 over the fields, and in the absence of timber and the shelter it 

 affords, results which cannot be attained in such fields. 

 There is only one objection to enclosures. It is alleged, and 

 perhaps truly, that mildew is prevalent in wheat when the 

 land on which it grows had been enclosed. 



The writer of the System of Agriculture suggests that the 

 Living meadows under water, and the bringing such water by 

 courses or by artificial means to ground which would not 



