The System of Hnsbandry. 2 5 



Roman-constructed road cut through these ill-favoured tracts, 

 the greater portion of the island was abandoned to the wild 

 fowl, the wolf, and the deer, or their equally untamed captors. 

 Dank morass and impenetrable forest growth, over which hung 

 for the greater part of each day an unwholesome mist, occu- 

 pied a large proportion of this uncared-for country.^ 



Yet ere the Roman domination terminated, we read ~ of the 

 inexhaustible supplies of British corn, which fed the Roman 

 garrisons in Gaul, and of the fleets of ships constructed for its 

 freightage ; and we shall not be wrong in attributing this change 

 for the better in the national agriculture to the superior know- 

 ledge and energy of that race which owned Virgil and Pliny 

 as their countrymen. 



We must however bear in mind, while we examine, as we 

 shall shortly do, the agricultural knowledge of these writers, 

 that their compatriots were, for all practical purposes, groping 

 their way in the dark in adapting the agriculture of their own 

 sunny peninsula to the sunless climate of this island. We 

 have no hesitation in asserting that the latter was in many 

 respects worse than it is nowadays. Apart from any specula- 

 tion upon the vagaries of the great Gulf Stream which has 

 hitherto so benefited the temperature of these favoured Islands, 

 we have reason to conclude that the excessive forest growth, 

 and the wholly undrained ground, caused so humid an atmo- 

 sphere and so frigid a soil as to have fully justified the con- - 

 demnatory observations which the historians of those days fre- 

 quently jotted down on their tablets and eventually copied 

 into their literary works. 



The smoke of great cities and the sulphurous fumes of the 

 manufacturing districts in modern times have no doubt affected 

 the inherent fertility of many a formerly favoured locality ; 

 but setting aside the effects of the manufacturer's destructive 

 work, we may conclude that the farmer's assiduous application 

 of numerous modern inventions has materially improved the 

 climate as a whole. The virgin and fruitful soil of early times, 

 if aided by artificial means skilfully applied, will still yield the 



^ Strabo, Geogr., lib. iv. p. 278. 



* Zosiraus, Hist. Nova, Ed. Beit., Leii^sic 1784, lib. iii. ch. 5. 



