THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY 33 



Newton.' He did, in fact, give bread to millions. Blith 

 and Hartlib followed him, but it was long, as the latter 

 says, before clover emerged from ' the fields of gentlemen 

 into common use.' Hartlib urges the adoption of roots 

 and the folding of sheep, ' after the Flaundei's manner,' 

 as a means of improving sandy commons. He continually 

 advocates the use of clover and ' Holy Hay or Saint foine,' 

 and gives space to the following advertisement : ' Such 

 as are desirous to buy any of the three-leaved grass, or 

 lucern, spurry, clover-grass, and sinke-foile, what quan- 

 tity they please, may have them at Thomas Brown's shop 

 at the Eed Lion in Soper Lane.' Twenty years later, 

 Plot mentions clover and sainfoin among the unusual 

 grasses cultivated in Oxfordshire. In 1669 Worlidge, 

 after advocating enclosures and the cultivation of artificial 

 grasses, urges turnips on farmers, ' although this be a 

 plant usually nourislit in gardens and be properly a gar- 

 den plant.' Still more explicit is Houghton (1682) ; he says 

 that ' some in Essex have their fallows after turnips, which 

 feed their sheep in winter, by which means their land is 

 dung'd as if it had been folded ; and these turnips, tho' 

 few or none be carried ofi" for humane use, are a very ex- 

 cellent improvement.' On the other hand, Blith derides 

 turnips, which, he says, are only eaten by swine after they 

 have been boiled. 



Drainage was ably discussed by Blith. Writing as ' a 

 lover of ingenuity,' he published his ' English Improver ' 

 in 1641. In 1652 a third edition of the work was pub- 

 lished, under the title of ' The English Improver Im- 

 proved.' In the interval Blith had become a captain and a 

 courtier, and dedicated his book to the ' Right Honourable 

 the Lord General Cromwell.' As remedies for the miseries 

 of the agricultural population, he suggests the employ- 



