384 CULTIVATED VEGETABLES. 



want of precaution in providing stores ; for a 

 wet season caused a famine in the year 1270 ; 

 and in the reign of Henry the Third, wheat 

 was so scarce that it sold for six pounds 

 eight shillings the quarter ; which, when we 

 make an allowance for the difference in the 

 value of money at that time, would be equal 

 to twenty-five pounds the quarter, or one 

 hundred and twenty-five pounds the load 

 in these days ! — the citizens of London not 

 only ate dogs and other carrion, but if the 

 authority of old writers may be relied on, 

 many of the poorer people were reduced to 

 the dreadful necessity of eating their own 

 children ! * 



Wheat appears not to have been cultivated 

 in all parts of England even so late as the 

 reign of Mary, as Tusser writes, 



" In SufTolke again, where as wheat neuer grew, 

 good husbandry used, good wheatland I knew : 

 This proverb experience long ago gaue, 



that nothing who practiseth nothing shall haue." 



About the beginning of the seventeenth 

 century, when wheat was first cultivated in 

 North America, some of the petty kings 



* Lambert's History of London. 



