166 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



beginning of June to the middle of August, on fallow which 

 had been brought to a good tilth, the seed harrowed in with 

 a bush harrow, and if necessary rolled. When the plants had 

 two or three leaves each they were to be hoed out, leaving 

 them five or six inches apart, though some slovenly farmers 

 did not trouble to do this ; but there is no mention of hoeing 

 between the rows. The fly was already recognized as a pest, 

 and soot and common salt were used to fight it. Folding 

 sheep in winter on turnips was then little practised, though 

 Lawrence strongly recommends it. According to Defoe, l 

 Suffolk was remarkable for being the first county where the 

 feeding and fattening of sheep and other cattle with turnips 

 was first practised in England, to the great improvement of 

 the land, ' whence ', he says, ' the practice is spread over most 

 of the east and south, to the great enriching of farmers and 

 increase of fat cattle.' There were great disputes as to 

 collecting the tithe, always a sore subject, on turnips ; and 

 the custom seems to have been that if they were eaten off by 

 store sheep they went tithe free, if sheep were fattened on 

 them the tithe was paid. 2 



""^Clover, the other great novelty of the seventeenth century, 

 was now generally sown with barley, oats, or rye grass, about 

 15 Ib. per acre. This amount, sown on 2 acres of barley, 

 would next year produce 2 loads worth about 5. The next 

 crop stood for seed, which was cut in August, the hay being 

 worth 9, and the seed out of it, 300 Ib., was sold much of it 

 for 1 6d. a Ib., the sum realized in that year from the 2 acres 

 being 30, without counting the aftermath. At this time 

 most of the seed was still imported from Flanders. 3 Much 

 of the common and waste land of England, not previously 

 worth 6d. an acre, had been by 1732 vastly improved through 

 sowing artificial grasses on it, so that various people had 

 gained considerable estates. 4 



1 Tour (ed. 1724), i. 87. 2 Ellis, Chiltern and Vale Farming, p. 353. 



8 Bradley, General Treatise, i. 175. 



4 Ellis, Chiltern and Vale Farming, p. 260. 



