205] 1'^^ FERTILITY OF THE COMMON FIELDS 49 



kept by the community was limited by the amount of forage 

 available for winter feeding. Often no limitation upon the 

 number pastured in summer in the common pastures was 

 necessary other than that no man should exceed the number 

 which he was able to keep during the winter. The meadow 

 hay was supplemented by such poor fodder as straw and the 

 loppings of trees, and the cattle were got through the winter 

 with the smallest amount of forage which would keep them 

 alive, but even with this economy it was impossible to keep 

 a sufficient number. 



The amount of stall manure produced in the winter was 

 of course small, on account of the scant feed, and even the 

 more plentiful manure of the summer months was the prop- 

 erty of the lord, so that the villain holdings received prac- 

 tically no dung. The villains were required to send their 

 cattle and sheep at night to a fold which was moved at fre- 

 quent intervals over the demesne land, and their own land 

 received ordinarily no dressing of manure excepting the 

 scant amount produced when the village flocks pastured on 

 the fallow fields. 



The supply of manure, insufficient in any case to maintain 

 the fertility of the arable land, was diminishing rather than 

 increasing. As Dr. Russell suggested in the passage referred 

 to above, the continuous use of pastures and meadows causes 

 a deterioration in their quality. The quantity of fodder was 

 decreasing for this reason, almost imperceptibly, but none the 

 less seriously. Fewer cattle could be kept as the grass land 

 deteriorated, and the small quantity of manure which was 

 available for restoring the productivity of the open fields 

 was gradually decreasing for this reason. 



(^Soil exhaustion went on during the Middle Ages not be- 

 cause the cultivators were careless or ignorant of the fact 

 that manure is needed to maintain fertility, but because this 

 means of improving the soil was not within their reach.^ 



