ON THE PRICE OF HAY AND STRAW. 305 



Oxford, buys at 6os. 6d., New College at tfs. 6d. ; while in the 

 next year the former gives 66s. 8d., the latter in July 23^. At 

 Votes Court, in 1649, Master gives prices from zos. to 75^. 

 These illustrations might be multiplied. 



The register of hay prices gives the same series of exception- 

 ally high rates in the decade 1643-1652, the price o 1649 being 

 the highest in the whole period, 54^. $d. ; and the same decade 

 giving evidence of two other very dear years, $os. 8d. in 1652 

 and 4$s. id. in 1648. After the first two decades of years, the 

 price of hay does not on an average undergo more than a slight 

 change, though it is on the whole rising in price. I have not 

 indeed departed from the rule, which I consider essential to the 

 interpretation of these prices, of reckoning the agricultural 

 year from September to September, but I am conscious that 

 this is less applicable to the hay crop than to corn produce, 

 since the hay crop was generally housed for some weeks before 

 the corn harvest began. Much indeed of the confusion which 

 has affected the reasonings of those who have hitherto dealt 

 with such information on agricultural prices as they have been 

 able to procure has arisen from the fact that they have taken 

 the civil year instead of the agricultural year. It is plain, for 

 example, that to comment on March and September prices 

 is to mix up two harvests, which may have been of very 

 different quality and quantity. By putting the hay prices 

 into the same kind of year, I incur something of the same 

 risk, for prices are affected to a greater extent than should 

 be by the crop of the second year, though I believe that the 

 use of new hay was as much avoided by the seventeenth- 

 century as by the nineteenth-century agriculturist. 



The prices of hay, though they are affected by the seasons, 

 are not so significant as those of corn, for the reason that they 

 do not represent such urgent demand as the supply of wheat 

 does. At the same time, owing to the absence of winter roots, 

 and the very imperfect cultivation of the artificial grasses, hay 

 was of much more importance in the economy of the seventeenth- 

 century agriculturist than it now is, for on its quality and 



VOL. v. X 



