FARMING DEFICIENCIES 109 



posed of letters from various writers on the defects of English 

 agriculture, and their remedies. Five-sixths of the Legacie are taken 

 up with " A Large Letter . . . written to M. Samuel Hartlib," 

 signed (1655), by R. Child. It throws a clear light on some of the 

 conditions of English farming in the middle of the seventeenth 

 century. 



In the " Large Letter " the cumbrousness of the English ploughs, 

 carts, and waggons is noticed. Clumsy implements and bad prac- 

 tices were said to exist side by side with obvious improvements, 

 which yet found no imitators. Some Kentish farmers used "4, 6, 

 yea 12 horses and oxen " in their ploughs, and in Ireland farmers 

 fastened their horses by the tails. Yet in Norfolk the practice was 

 to plough with two horses only, while in Kent itself, a certain 

 Colonel Blunt of Gravesend ploughed with one horse, and an ingeni- 

 ous yeoman had invented a double-furrow plough. Men who 

 perplexed their brains about perpetual motion would, says the 

 writer, have used their ingenuity to more effect if they had tried 

 to improve the implements of agriculture. Cattle-breeding, except 

 " in Lancashire and some few Northern Counties " was not studied ; 

 no attempt was made to improve the best breeds for milking or 

 for fattening. Dairying needed attention ; butter might be " better 

 sented and tasted " ; our cheeses were inferior to those of Italy, 

 France, or Holland. 1 Various remedies against the prevalence of 

 smut and mildew in wheat are suggested, including lime, change of 

 seed, early sowing, and the use of bearded wheat. Flax and hemp 

 were unduly neglected, though both might be grown, it is sug- 

 gested, with profit to agriculturists, and to the great increase of 

 employment ; as a remedy against this persistent neglect, the 

 author advocates compulsory legislation, to force farmers, " even 

 like brutes, to understand their own good." Twenty-one natural 

 substances are recommended as manures, the value of which had 

 been proved by experience. Among them are chalk, marl, lime, 

 farm-yard dung, if it is not too much exposed to the sun and rain ; 

 " snaggreet," or soil full of small shells taken out of rivers, and 

 much used in Surrey ; owse, from marshy ditches or foreshores ; 

 seaweed ; sea-sand, as used in Cornwall ; " folding of sheepe after 



1 This also had been the opinion of Googe, who places the Parmesan cheese 

 of Italy first. Then follow, in order of merit, the cheeses of Holland, Nor- 

 mandy, and lastly, of England. Among English cheeses the best came from 

 Cheshire, Shropshire, Banbury, Suffolk, and Essex. " The very worste " is 

 " the Kentish cheese." 



