ADDRESSES 249 



loved to acquire these marshes in order to render them 

 amenable to cultivation, and frequently even their monas- 

 teries rose out of the bosom of the waters. When it was 

 impossible to drain them, or when economy demanded it, 

 they brought straw and laid it down in bundles, and upon 

 these bundles earth was placed. They dug out ponds into 

 which they collected the superfluous waters by tiles used to 

 drain the land. In this way the monastic orders extended 

 the cultivation of the soil from the south of Europe even 

 to the most distant north. They facilitated communication 

 between different points, and were the organizers of differ- 

 ent kinds of industry. Sweden owes to them the perfection 

 of its race of horses and the beginnings of commerce in wheat. 

 On the island of Tuteron, where was formerly located a 

 monastery of the order of Citeaux, plants still grow spon- 

 taneously, which in the neighborhood one is compelled to 

 cultivate with care. The Abbot William brought the first 

 salad from France into Denmark. If in the eleventh cen- 

 tury England could boast of an agriculture more advanced 

 than many other countries, if it presented less forest and 

 heath and more cultivated lands and fat pasturage, it owes 

 it to the zeal of the monks who had found there in early 

 times a hospitable welcome. It was the monks who in 

 Flanders cleared the forests, drained the marshes, rendered 

 fertile the sandy lands, snatched from the sea its most an- 

 cient possessions and changed a desert into a blooming 

 garden. 



There were certain abbeys, especially in England, that 

 took the greatest care not to clear the country of all trees. 

 It is related of Alexander, the first Abbot of Kirkstall, that, 

 foreseeing the necessities of the future, he forbade the cut- 



