CONDITION OF OPEN-FIELDS AND COMMONS 225 



possible that it was also applied at Wilburton in Cambridgeshire. 

 With these exceptions, little, if any, use seems to have been made 

 of a well-intentioned piece of legislation. 



Small progress had in fact been made among the cultivators of. i 

 open-fields. Here and there, the new spirit of agricultural enter- \J 

 prise had influenced the occupiers of village farms. In rare instances f\ 

 improved practices were introduced. But the demand for increased 

 food supplies had become, as our ancestors were experiencing, too 

 pressing for delay. Any continuous series of adverse seasons created 

 a real scarcity of bread, and more than once during the Napoleonic 

 wars, famine was at the door. Unless food could be produced at 

 home, it could not be obtained elsewhere. An extension of the 

 cultivated area was the quickest means of adding to production. 

 Agriculturists at the close of the eighteenth century were convinced 

 that no adequate increase in the produce of the soil could be obtained, X 

 unless open-field farms were broken up, and the commons brought / > 

 into more profitable cultivation. If they were right in that belief, 

 the great agricultural change was justified, which established the 

 uniform system with which we are familiar to-day. The point is 

 one of the greatest importance. The uncritical praises lavished 

 by sixteenth and seventeenth century travellers on open-field 

 farming are of little value because they had no higher standard 

 with which to compare its results. Such a standard had now been 

 to some extent created. It may therefore be useful to illustrate, 

 from the contemporary records supplied by the Reports to the 

 Board of Agriculture, 1 the condition of open arable land and of 

 pasture-commons in the years 1793-1815. The material is arranged 

 according to the four districts into which, for statistical purposes, 

 the English counties are usually divided. The cumulative force of 

 the evidence is great. But some of it relates to wastes which were 

 not attached to village farms, although common of pasture and 

 fuel was often claimed over the area by the inhabitants of the 

 neighbourhood. As to the reliability of the whole evidence, it 



1 The Reports to the Board are extant in two forms. The quarto editions 

 were drafts, intended for private circulation and for correction by practical 

 agriculturists belonging to the district under survey. They all belong to 

 the years 1793-94 95. The octavo editions are the Reports in their final 

 form. They were published at various dates, ranging from 1795 in the case 

 of Holt's Lancashire, to 1815 when Quayle's Channel Islands was issued. In 

 some cases the Reports are practically the same in their draft and final forms. 

 Sometimes, on the other hand, they were re-written by other Reporters with 

 scarcely any reference to the original Survey. 



P 



