THE NINETEENTH CENTURY 139 



Oxen were still in some places used for ploughing. 

 Pigs were of the Berkshire, Suffolk and Gloucester 

 breeds. 



The progress in the crops and stock had not been 

 equalled by that in the employment of agricultural 

 implements. Farmers still used " the great Hertford- 

 shire wheel plough," an implement, according to 

 Young, of "miserable construction." It required, as 

 a rule, four horses or oxen harnessed abreast ; and a 

 driver besides the ploughman was, of course, neces- 

 sary. Young urged the farmers to use something 

 more up to date. He found a few farmers in the 

 possession of threshing-machines worked by horses ; 

 they did not, however, seem to be very successful. A 

 Bygrave farmer had a remarkable machine that cost 

 him 400 ; it was worked by six horses, and threshed 

 25 to 30 loads of corn a day, ground wheat, cut chaff 

 and dressed corn. Some farmers had a chaff-cutter, 

 a turnip-slicer, an oil-cake mill, but they were rarities. 

 Drills, though invented, as we have seen, a century 

 before, were hardly at that time to be found in Hert- 

 fordshire, and Arthur Young clearly did not believe 

 in them. He preferred "the common method of sow- 

 ing broadcast." Of the few men whom he found 

 employing drills, some horse-hoed their crops and 

 claimed that they used less seed and kept their land 

 cleaner than their neighbours. 



There were six great turnpike roads running through 

 this little county and also many good cross-roads. 

 This made it easier for farmers to send their great 

 four-horse waggons to London, taking straw, hay and 

 wheat, and bringing back manure from the town. 

 Other farmers would send to the great markets at 

 Hertford and St. Albans, and there were doubtless 



