360 THEIR VERY GRADUAL EXHAUSTION. 



I think, be doubted, that the differences still observed 

 in the fertility of lands adjoining the ruins of monastic 

 houses, are in part to be ascribed to the long continuance 

 of a practice bj which the natural fertilising substances of 

 a whole neighbourhood were lavished on a comparatively 

 restricted space. That it is very long since this marked 

 distinction was made in favour of the abbey home-farm, 

 is the point I wish to bring out. It shows that land is 

 very grateful, and that when once enriched, either by 

 nature or by the hand of man, it may long resist exhaus- 

 tion, and maintain a decided superiority over that which 

 adjoins it. But its doing so is no proof that, though 

 later, it will not also be finally exhausted, if submitted 

 to inconsiderate and selfish modes of culture. 



The first practical or economical consequence of this 

 exhaustion of the land is, that it gradually ceases to pro- 

 duce a remunerative return of those crops Avhich have 

 been specially cultivated upon, and have been the imme- 

 diate means of exhausting it. In North America, gene- 

 rally, this crop has been wheat — as this has always been 

 the kind of grain for which the most ready market could 

 be obtained, or which could be most certainly exchanged 

 for the West India produce and the manufactured articles 

 which the settler required. As the exhausting culture 



Avit, the ploughing of one rood for each acre, without meals, (which 

 custom is still observed,) and was to have the folds where all the men 

 of the town, except the steward, who has his own fold, are bound to put 



their sheep, (which custom, also, is still observed.) 



" Also, the cellarer was used freely to take all the dunghills in every 

 street, before the doors of those who were holding overland ; for to 

 them only was it allowable to collect dung, and to keep it. This custom 

 was not enforced in the time of the Abbot Hugh, up to the period when 

 Dennis and Roger of Hingham became cellarers, who, being desirous of 

 reviving the ancient custom, took the cars of the burgesses, laden with 

 dung, and made them unload ; but a multitude of the burgesses resist- 

 ing, and being too strong for them, every one in his own tenement now 

 collects his dung in a heap, and the poor sell theirs when and to whom 

 they choose." 



