ADDRESSES 235 



under a vigorous sky the most useful vegetables and the 

 most productive grains, importing continually into the 

 countries they colonized animals of better breed, or plants 

 new and unknown there before; here introducing the rear- 

 ing of cattle and horses, there bees or fruit; in another place 

 the brewing of beer with hops; in Sweden, the corn trade; 

 in Burgundy, artificial pisciculture; in Ireland, salmon 

 fisheries; about Parma, cheese-making, and finally occupy- 

 ing themselves with the culture of the vine, and planting 

 the best vineyards of Burgundy, the Rhine, Auvergne, and 

 England; for the monks of Croyland introduced the vine 

 even into the fens of Ely and in other countries where it 

 has now disappeared. They were the first to turn their at- 

 tention to improving the breeds of cattle, declaring that 

 the promiscuous union of nobody's son with everybody's 

 daughter resulted in half -starved oxen "euyll for the stone 

 and euyll for digestyon, fitter to be used outside as a water- 

 proof e than inside." They taught the necessity of letting 

 the land be fallow for a time after several years of continu- 

 ous cropping; they practised rotation of crops, using clover 

 as the last in the series ; they improved the different varieties 

 of fruits and learned the art of grafting, budding, and layer- 

 ing; they taught by precept and example the value of drain- 

 age and irrigation. In short, in everything making for pro- 

 gressive agriculture we find them blazing the way; and when 

 the monasteries were suppressed by Henry VIII, a death- 

 blow was struck for a time at scientific agriculture and 

 horticulture. 



And what they did for England was paralleled by their 

 work upon the continent. Need we point to any other in- 

 stance than that of Vitrucius peopling the sand-banks of 



