SKETCH OF MODERN AGRICULTURE 



53 



the gardens attached to the manor houses began to be cultivated 

 by tenant farmers. But the great expansion came in the middle 

 of the seventeenth century, and it was due primarily to the in- 

 troduction of clover and turnips. Cutler, in his " Short History 

 of English Agriculture," speaks of this as the greatest agricul- 

 tural event of the century. The turnip had long been known 

 in England as a garden root, and perhaps to some slight 

 extent as a field crop, but its cultivation did not begin on 

 a large scale until Sir Richard Weston began, about 1645, 

 urging its cultivation after the Dutch method. From this time 

 on, these two crops turnips and clover increased steadily 

 though slowly. 



Clover and turnips. The advantages of these two crops were 

 that the clover greatly increased the farmer's yield of hay, and 

 the turnips enabled him to dispense with the fallow and to utilize 

 all his land every year. Moreover, the clover tended to enrich the 

 soil, as we now know, by restoring nitrogen to it ; and both 

 crops enabled the farmer to keep more cattle on his land and 

 thus increased his supply of manure. Again, it had formerly 

 been necessary for the farmer to kill his supply of meat in the fall, 

 while the animals were fat, and then the country had to eat salt 

 meat during the rest of the year. With clover and turnips the 

 farmer could keep his cattle fat during the winter and supply 

 the country with fresh meat the year round. The persistence 

 of the open-field system in many parts of England probably 

 accounts, in large part, for the fact that the cultivation of these 

 crops did not increase more rapidly. Nevertheless, the progress 

 made was sufficiently rapid to mark an epoch in English rural 

 economy. 



Great rural enterprises. This period was one of general ag- 

 ricultural enterprise in several other directions. In the fens of 

 the eastern counties, great drainage schemes were begun which 

 h;ive made this one of the richest farming regions of England. 



