204 THE DIFFUSION OF KNOWLEDGE 



of the Mercians." The principal road from Tarn worth to Ashby 

 lay, in 1789, " in a state almost impassable several months in the 

 year." Waggons were taken off their wheels and dragged on their 

 bellies. Essex, in the time of Fitzherbert, was famous for the 

 badness of its roads. In the eighteenth century it worthily main- 

 tained its reputation. " A mouse could barely pass a carriage in 

 its narrow lanes," which were filled with bottomless ruts, and often 

 choked by a string of chalk waggons, buried so deeply in the mire 

 that they could only be extricated by thirty or forty horses. " Of 

 all the cursed roads that ever disgraced this kingdom in the very 

 age of barbarism none ever equalled that from Billericay to the 

 ' King's Head ' at Tilbury " was the suffering cry of Young in 1769. 

 The roads of Herefordshire, says Marshall, twenty years later, were 

 " such as you might expect to find in the marshes of Holland or the 

 mountains of Switzerland." In Devonshire, which Marshall con- 

 sidered to be agriculturally the most benighted district of England, 

 there was not in 1750 one single wheeled carriage ; everything was 

 carried in sledges or on pack-horses. The latter were still in uni- 

 versal use in 1796. Crops were piled between willow " crooks," 

 to which the load was bound ; manure was carried in strong panniers, 

 or " potts," the bottom of which was a sort of falling door ; sand 

 was slung in bags across the wooden pack-saddle. Even where 

 efforts were made to improve the highways, the attempt was often 

 rendered useless by ignorance of the science of road-making. Some 

 roads were convex and barrel-shaped. But the fall from the centre 

 of the road to the sides was so rapid that carts could only travel in 

 the centre with safety. Many roads were concave, constructed in 

 the form of a trough, filled in with sand. In wet weather this 

 deposit became porridge. On a road of this formation between 

 Woodstock and Oxford, Marshall, in 1789, encountered labourers 

 employed in " scooping out the batter." Yet in spite of the diffi- 

 culty of communication, distant counties carried on a considerable 

 trade in agricultural produce. Thus calves, bred in Northampton- 

 shire, were sent to Essex to be reared. The animals travelled in 

 carts with their legs tied together, were eight days on the road, 

 and during the journey were fed with " gin-balls," i.e. flour and gin 

 mixed together. Off the main lines of communication, highways 

 were unmetalled tracks, which spread in width as vehicles deviated 

 to avoid the ruts of their predecessors. By-roads were often zig- 

 zag lanes, engineered on the principle that one good or bad turn 



