259] ENCLOSURE FOR SHEEP PASTURE 103 



made to grow did away with the need of waiting ten or fif- 

 teen years, or perhaps half a century, for natural grass to 

 cover the fields and restore their productiveness. 



Only with the introduction of grass seeding did it become 

 possible to keep a sufficient amount of stock, not only to 

 maintain the fertility of the soil, but to improve it steadily. 

 The soil instead of being taxed year after year under the heavy 

 strain of grain crops was being renovated by the legumes that 

 gathered nitrogen from the air and stored it on tubercles at- 

 tached to their roots. The deep roots of the clover pene- 

 trated the soil, that no plow ever touched. Legumes like 

 alfalfa, producing pound by pound more nutritious fodder than 

 meadow grass, produced acre by acre two and three times the 

 amount, and when such a field was turned under to make place 

 for a grain crop, the deep and heavy sod, the mass of decay- 

 ing roots, offered the farmer '* virgin " soil, where previously 

 even five bushels of wheat could not be gathered.^ 



As the value of these new crops became generally recog- 

 nized, some effort was made to introduce them into the 

 regular rotation of crops in the fields which were still held 

 in common, but, for the most part, these efforts were im- 

 successful, and new vigor was given to the enclosure move- 

 ment Frequently persons having no arable land of their 

 own had right of common over the stubble and fallow which 

 could not be exercised when turnips and clover were 

 planted; for reasons of this sort, it was difficult to change 

 the ancient course of crops in the open fields. For example, 

 late in the eighteenth century (1793) at Stiffkey and 

 Morston, the improvements due to enclosure are said to have 

 been great, for: 



being half-year land before, they could raise no turnips except 

 by agreement, nor cultivate their land to the best advantage.^ 



1 Simkhovitch, Political Science Quarterly, vol. xxviii, pp. 400, 401. 



2 Board of Agriculture Report, Norfolk, ch. vi. 



