192 THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE 



Young (1770) states that, while in other counties the land lay idle, 

 these crops fed five horses to the acre for a month, at 2s. 6d. each a 

 week. It was on these crops that Hertfordshire farmers reared the 

 horses which they bought as two-year-olds in Leicestershire. Yet 

 at the beginning of the nineteenth century the example had been 

 rarely followed in other counties. 



Suffolk and Essex also afforded good examples of the. best Enghsh 

 farming as it was practised at the close of the eighteenth century. 

 Both counties had, as a whole, been enclosed for many years. Only 

 on the poor and chalky soil of the north-western district had open- 

 fields held their own. As early as 1618,^ East Suffolk and Mid 

 Suffolk Avere enclosed, and only " the westerne parts ether wholly 

 champion or neer." In both comities yeomanry abounded, and 

 in Essex the class was in 1807 still increasing. " For twenty 

 or thirty years past scarcely an estate is sold, if divided into 

 lots of forty or fifty to two or three hundred a year but is purchased 

 by farmers." ^ Both counties were centres of manufacturing 

 industries, and in addition enjoyed the advantage of access to a 

 great market. Suffolk supplied London with butter, Essex with 

 calves, for which it had been famous in the seventeenth century. 

 In both counties large quantities of manure were now used on the 

 land. Farmers were not always so energetic. Under a lease of 

 1753 a tenant of the Suffolk manor of Hawsted was allowed two 

 shillings for every load of manure which he brought from Bury and 

 laid on the land. In a tenancy of twenty-one years only one load 

 A^as charged to the landlord. Sixty years later, agriculturists had 

 become more energetic. On the hght sands of East Suffolk, marl 

 and a calcareous shelly mixture of phosphates called " crag " were 

 freely employed as fertihsers. Chalk from the Kentish quaiTies 

 for use on the clays, as well as London refuse, were purchased by 

 Essex farmers, conveyed by sea up the estuaries, and thence dis- 

 tributed in the county. Probably this traffic partly explains the 

 condition of the Essex roads, which were as bad as the Suffolk 

 highways were good. In both counties hollow drainage was 

 practised earher than elsewhere. The drains were wedge-shaped, 

 filled with branches, twisted straAv, or stone, and covered in with 

 earth. Bradley ^ speaks of the " Essex practice " of making drains 



1 Breviary of Suffolk, by Robert Reyce, 1618, edited by Lord F. Hervey, 1902. 

 ^North-East Essex, by Arthur Yotmg (1807), vol. i. p. 40. 

 3 Complete Body of Husbandry (1727), p. 133-4. 



