THE GOTHS AND VANDALS 199 



Year's Land," which were cropped year after year without any 

 fallows. Only the cleanest farming could have made such a system 

 productive. But here Marshall found beans hidden among mustard 

 growing wild as a weed ; peas choked by poppies and corn mari- 

 golds ; every stem of barley fettered with convolvulus ; wheat 

 pining in thickets of couch and thistle. It is not surprising that 

 the yield of wheat was anything from 18 bushels an acre down to 

 12 or 8 bushels. 



Other instances might be quoted to show the general condition 

 of open-field farms. But the system had its champions, even 

 among practical agriculturists, especially if they were flock-masters. 

 It cannot, therefore, always have been characterised by the worst 

 farming. No doubt lower depths might be reached. If severalty 

 made a good farmer better, it also made a bad farmer worse. Nor 

 was the system altogether incapable of improvement. Here and 

 there Young or Marshall alludes to some useful practice adopted 

 on village farms. For instance, Young speaks of the drainage of 

 common pastures by very large ploughs belonging to the parish, 

 cutting 16 inches in depth and the same in width, drawn by 12 

 horses ; of the introduction of clover by common consent into the 

 rotation of crops, or of the adoption of a fourth course instead of 

 the old two- or three-shift system. So also Marshall notes the 

 open-field practice of dibbing and hoeing beans in Gloucestershire, 

 where beans commanded a ready market among the Guinea traders 

 of Bristol as food for negro slaves on the voyage from the African 

 coast to the West Indies. But, speaking generally, any rotation 

 of crops in which roots formed an element was with difficulty 

 introduced on arable land which was pastured in common during 

 the autumn and winter months ; drainage was impracticable on 

 the intermixed lands of village farms ; among the underfed, under- 

 sized, and underbred flocks and herds of the commons the principles 

 of Bakewell could not be followed. That open-field farmers were 

 impervious to new methods is certain. " You might," says Young, 

 " as well recommend to them an Orrery as a hand-hoe." That they 

 had not the capital to carry out costly improvements is also obvious. 

 They could not bring into cultivation the sands of Norfolk, the 

 wolds of Lincolnshire, or the ling-covered Peak of Derbyshire. 

 From a purely agricultural point of view Young's intemperate 

 crusade against village farms was justified, and he had reason on 

 his side when he said that " the Goths and Vandals of open-field 



