158 History of the English Landed Interest, 



mile, the first of wliicli was so shaped for arable purposes as to 

 be an eighth of a mile, i.e. one furlong long. It is interesting 

 to discover in this manner that all our modern lineal measure- 

 ments originated in agricultural usages. Even the perch was 

 derived from the ploughman's estimate of the width turned up 

 by the passage of his implement four times up and five times 

 down a furlong. The four perches in width are, says the author, 

 ploughable in thirty-six " rounds," an expression which still 

 exists in ploughman's vocabulary, and which represents the 

 passage of the plough once up and down the space cultivated. 

 The width of sixty-six feet is therefore split up into seventy- 

 two furrows, and the distance travelled over by the plough 

 during the cultivation of one acre is seventy-two furlongs, or 

 nine miles. The breadth of the furrow is eleven inches, and 

 the area ploughable in one day is a little short of an acre on 

 unturned land, and an entire acre for a second time over. 

 Referring to the practice of a modern ploughman, we find that 

 his furrow is five inches deep by nine broad on fallow ground, 

 and six inches by seven inches on lea ground ; that a yoke of 

 two oxen, though slower than a pair of horses, can plough 

 as much as the latter, because they never stop before they 

 turn on the headland ; and that the extent of ground per diem 

 is very much the same as that given by Walter of Henley. 

 But show the modern ploughman a picture of the clumsy 

 implement in use then, and remind him of the wretched con- 

 dition of an ox often kept in the open all the year round, and 

 he will indignantly repudiate any comparison of times between 

 himself and the Norman socman. Yet by three o'clock, the 

 same time at which the Henley man's oxen are unyoked, he 

 will, if he has worked moderately hard, have accomplished the 

 same area, though owing to his narrower furrow he will have 

 travelled two miles more than the 13th centurj'' ploughman. 

 These but slightly increased capabilities of the modern agri- 

 culturist are by no means a cause for boasting. We have 

 only to compare the rude plough used by the Henley bailiff, 

 and the wretched quadrupeds (whether horses or oxen matters 

 not) which drew it, with the light effective implement turned 

 out now-a-days b}'- a firm like Ransome & Sims, and such 



