LINCOLNSHIRE FENS 247 



seasons. The cattle and sheep, which are constantly depastured 

 on this common, are of a very unthrifty ill-shapen kind, from 

 being frequently starved, and no attention paid to their breed. 

 Geese are the only animals which are at any time thrifty ; and 

 these frequently, when young, die of the cramp, or, when plucked, 

 in consequence of the excessive bleakness and wetness of the com- 

 mons. A goose pays annually from Is. to 16d. by being 4 times 

 plucked. These commons are the frequent resort of thieves, who 

 convey the cattle into distant Counties for sale." 



The North Fens round the Isle of Axholm formed in 1794 another 

 large area (12,000 acres) of commons and wastes. If " divided 

 and inclosed," says the Reporter, 1 they " would for the most part 

 make very valuable land ... in their present state, they are 

 chiefly covered with water, and in summer throw forth the coarsest 

 of productions ; the best parts, which are those nearest the enclosed 

 high lands, are constantly pared and burnt to produce vegetable 

 ashes. . . . The more remote parts of the common are dug up 

 for fuel. On account of the general wetness of those commons, 

 and their being constantly overstocked by the large occupiers of 

 contiguous estates, or in such seasons as the depasturage is desirable 

 in summer, to ease the inclosed land, the cattle and sheep necessarily 

 depastured thereon at all seasons being those of the cottagers, who 

 are for the most part destitute of provision for them in winter, are 

 always unthrifty, and subject to various diseases, which render 

 them very unprofitable to the occupiers." The farming of the 

 open arable fields had, in the Reporter's opinion, deteriorated 

 rather than progressed. " If," he says, 2 " those gentlemen, whether 

 proprietors or agents, who have any concern in the management 

 of common fields, will examine into the present mode of occupancy 

 of the different classes of them . . . they will in most cases find 

 them in a weak impoverished state ; and that the original systematic 

 farming of them is either lost or laid aside, and that the agriculture 

 of the common fields of this county has rather declined than 

 improved." The Cambridgeshire Reporter, 3 it may be added, 

 formed the same opinion of the open-fields in that county, and 

 he produces some evidence to prove that the rental of open farms 

 had fallen since the seventeenth century. 



The general impression left by this mass of evidence is that 

 the agricultural defects of the intermixture of land under the 

 1 Stone, p. 29. * Stone, p. 56. * Vancouver, p. 97. 



