56 ARTHUR YOUNG AND THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE 



greater part of Nottingliamshire ; Rossendale, in Lanca- 

 shire, was still a cliace ; nearly the whole of Derbyshire 

 was a black region of ling ; the land lighthouse of 

 Dunstan pillar still guided the traveller from Sleaford to 

 Brigg ; Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire still defied 

 the assaults of drainage ; Northumberland was still over- 

 spread with forests of broom, in which a Scotch army 

 might hide ; from the northern point of Derbyshire to the 

 extremity of Northumberland a line might be drawn for 

 150 miles as the crow flies, which passed across nothing 

 but wastes. It was across this district that Jea6ie Deans 

 travelled in the reign of George II. Three quarters of 

 Westmoreland, according to Bishop Watson, lay uncul- 

 tivated. Hounslow Heath and Finchley Common were 

 described in 1793 as wastes, fitted only for Cherokees and 

 savages. That part of the East Riding called the Carrs, 

 from Bridlington Quay to Spurn Point, and inland as far 

 as Driffield, was an extensive swamp, which produced little 

 but the ague ; willow trees marked out the road from 

 Hull to Beverley, and the bells rang at dusk from the 

 tower of Barton-upon-Humber to guide the travellers. 

 Though many farmers in the north were masters of 

 from 5,000 to 40,000 sheep, and tenants of farms from 

 500L to 2,000?. a year, they still milked their ewes, and 

 were ignorant of the nature of a fold. 



Half England was cultivated in very small farms, or 

 by small peasant proprietors, or on the common field sys- 

 tem. So late as 1794 it is calculated that, of 8,500 parishes, 

 4,500 were even then still farmed in common. Out of 

 84,000 acres of arable land in Bedfordshire, 24,000 acres 

 were in open fields. In the 147,000 arable acres of 

 Cambridgeshire, 132,000 were tilled in common; out of 

 438,000 acres in Berkshire, 220,000 were similarly culti- 



