SHEEP ON OPEN-FIELD FARMS 95 



of marl, lime, chalk, soot, or town refuse, all of which were used in 

 the Middle Ages, and it is doubtful whether mediaeval farmers 

 followed his practice of rotting straw in pits filled with water, or of 

 carting manure on to the land and leaving it in heaps for a month 

 before it was spread or ploughed in. One new practice, and that 

 a miserable one, is recommended. It is suggested that buck-wheat 

 should be sown and ploughed in, in order to enrich the soil. 



Both Tusser and Fitzherbert advise that on open-field land the 

 sheep should be folded from May to early in September. But 

 Fitzherbert believed that folding fostered the scab. Among the 

 practical advantages of enclosures which he urges is the opportunity 

 that they afforded to farmers of dispensing with the common fold, 

 saving the fees to the common shepherd and the cost of hurdles and 

 stakes, and keeping their flocks in better health. June was the 

 month for shearing. Fitzherbert recommends that sheep should 

 be carefully washed before they were shorn, " the which shall be 

 to the owner greate profyte " in the sale of his wool. Probably 

 the modern farmer has found that his unwashed wool at a greater 

 weight but a lower price is worth as much as his washed wool at 

 less weight and a higher price. Fitzherbert considers sheep to be 

 " the most profitable cattle that any man can have." But, until 

 the introduction of turnips, the true value of sheep on arable land 

 could not be realised. Hence the two branches of farming, which 

 are now combined with advantage to both the sheep farmer and 

 the corn-grower, were entirely dissevered. Until clover, artificial 

 grasses, turnips, swedes, mangolds took their place among the 

 ordinary crops for which arable land was cultivated, no farmer 

 experienced the full truth of the saying that the foot of the sheep 

 turns sand into gold. The practice of milking ewes still continued. 

 Fitzherbert condemns it ; but Tusser, though he notices the injuri- 

 ous results, weakens the effect of his warning by promising that 

 five ewes will give as much milk as one cow. Neither Fitzherbert 

 nor Tusser has anything to say on the improvement of breeds of 

 cattle for the special purposes that they serve. The " general 

 utility " animal was still their ideal. Yet the root of the matter is 

 in Fitzherbert, when he says that a man cannot thrive by corn 

 unless he have live-stock, and that the man who tries to keep live- 

 stock without corn is either " a buyer, a borrower, or a beggar/' 

 If once the difficulty of winter keep could be solved, here was the 

 secret of mixed husbandry realised, and the truth of the maxim 



