\,>. 4.] MONKS IX AGRICULTURE. 13 



waters back upon the land. Streams bewildered in the for- 

 ests changed their channels, mingling silt and sand with the 

 black soil of the peat. Nature left to herself ran into wild 

 riot and chaos more and more, till the whole fen became one 

 dismal swamp. Four or five centuries later William of 

 Malnicsburv visits the place and leaves us this charming 

 picture of the change:* "It is a counterfeit of Paradise, 

 where the gentleness and purity of heaven appear already to 

 be reflected. In the midst of the fens rise groves of trees 

 which seem to touch the stars with their tall and slender 

 tops ; the charmed eye wanders over a sea of verdant herb- 

 age, the foot which treads the wide meadows meets with no 

 obstacle in its path. Not an inch of land as far as the eye 

 can reach lies uncultivated. Here the soil is hidden by fruit 

 trees ; there by vines stretched upon the ground or trailed 

 on trellises. Nature and art rival each other, the one sup- 

 plying all that the other forgets to produce. O deep and 

 pleasant solitude ! Thou hast been given by God to the 

 monks, so that their mortal life may daily bring them nearer 

 to heaven." 



Everywhere we see the monks instructing the population 

 in the most profitable methods and industries, naturalizing 

 under a vigorous sky the most useful vegetables and the most 

 productive grains, importing continually into the countries 

 they colonized animals of better breed, or plants new and 

 unknown there before ; here introducing the rearing of cattle 

 and horses, there bees or fruit ; in another place the brew- 

 ing of beer with hops ; in Sweden, the corn trade ; in Bur- 

 gundy, artificial pisciculture ; in Ireland, salmon fisheries ; 

 about Parma, cheese making, and finally occupying them- 

 selves with the culture of the vine and planting the best vine- 

 yards of Burgundy, the Rhine, Auvergne and England, for 

 the monks of Croyland introduced it even into the fens of 

 Ely and in other countries where the vine has now disap- 

 peared. They were the first to turn their attention to im- 

 proving the breeds of cattle, declaring that the promiscuous 

 union of nobody's son with everybody's daughter resulted 

 in half-starved oxen " euyll for the stone and euyll for diges- 



* "Chronicle of William of Malmesbury." 



