250 History of the English Landed Interest. 



support and in preventing its being sown in proper time. 

 "Nor is the food of great consequence, for you must have many 

 acres of turnip tops to keep any stock of sheep ; and, as to 

 the roots, they grow so sticky and hard after the tops are all 

 advanced that their value is much declined." It would seem, 

 then, that the eighteenth-century flock-master's onl}^ resources 

 in late spring were to use up some of his rye as sheep feed 

 (for which it was ill adapted), or turn the flock on to the young 

 wheat, or forestall the young spring shoots on the permanent 

 pasture. Young points out that when the hay stock and 

 turnips thus fail, the farmers should have a cabbage crop upon 

 which to fall back. This juicy plant, supplemented by an 

 early bite at the young rye grass and clover, would not only 

 finish off the fat wethers for the butcher, but increase the flow 

 of ewes' milk, and help to fatten the forward lambs. 



It would therefore seem that in Young's time clover as a 

 field crop had not been universally adopted, and that the pro- 

 cess of " hogging," or storing a portion of the turnip crop in 

 earth, beyond the mischievous influence of frosts, was unknown. 

 Before the 12th of May, the general date for turning the live 

 stock on to the pastures, there could be very little spring shoots, 

 even from the earliest clover roots, available as sheep feed, 

 and lOO sheep would soon demolish many acres of cabbages, so 

 that it is not surprising to find Young an advocate of another 

 crop which has since his day fallen into disuse, but which must 

 have been of considerable value to a farmer thus pinched for 

 sheep feed. "Another crop for feeding sheep," he says, "which 

 is of particular merit, is burnet; an acre of it managed properly 

 will at this season yield three times the food of an acre of 

 clover and ray grass. It should be five or six inches high in 

 November, and left so through the winter. Burnet has the 

 singular quality of maintaining its green leaves, to the full 

 growth, quite through the severest winter, so that, under deep 

 snows, you find an amazing luxuriance of vegetation. From 

 November to February the crop will gain two or three inches 

 in growth, and then be ready for sheep. It will be better in 

 March, and if kept, ready in April not only for sheep, but for 

 horses, cows, or any other stock. This is a product which no 



