I.] EARLY niSTORY OF MANURES 3 



encouragement to the use of substances like manures 

 for the improvement of the land. 



Doubtless the old traditions did not perish in the 

 Romance countries, but as before were handed down 

 from one generation to another ; as long as corn and 

 wine continued to be cultivated the immemorial pre- 

 cepts concerning their management would linger about 

 the country side and be treasured in the memories of 

 the workers in the fields. But during the Dark Ages 

 this kind of knowledge sank below the level of what- 

 ever literature was being written ; it had to diffuse 

 slowly from the remains of Roman civilisation among 

 the invading peoples, and it is only by chance that we 

 get any record of what the countryman did or thought. 

 In many English tenures we find that the flocks of the 

 tenants had to be folded on the lord's land at night, 

 the manure thus brought being one of his most valued 

 privileges ; while in Walter de Henley's Husbandrie, the 

 great mediaeval treatise on the duties of a land agent, 

 we find instructions for the preservation of dung by 

 the use of litter and marl. The manure thus obtained 

 was to be stored in a heap and preferably applied to 

 sandy land. From mediaeval times also we derive such 

 maxims as the Flemish proverb, 



Point de fourrage, point des betail. 

 Point des betail, point de fumier, 

 Point de fumier, point de fourrage. 



When, with the general resurrection of learning at the 

 Renaissance, we once more get books on agriculture, 

 we find that either old tradition or the experience of 

 men of an enquiring turn of mind, who had been 

 trying all sorts of things on their land, had already 

 built up a certain knowledge of manures and manuring. 

 The value of marl and chalk, of woollen rags and ashes, 

 was certainly known in the sixteenth century; men 



