LINCOLNSHIRE AND THE EAST RIDING 239 



where they are often too much crowded ; the scab, the rot, and 

 every circumstance attend them, which can delay their being 

 profitable ; so that it may be reasonably concluded, that they are 

 of less value than those bred in inclosures, from 10s. to 15s. per 

 head, and their fleeces are equally unproductive." Five years 

 later Arthur Young reported on this part of the county. 1 He 

 describes the true Lincolnshire cattle which he found on open- 

 field farms as a " wretched " breed ; " they all run together on a 

 pasture, without the least thought of selection." At three years 

 old, they were worth little more than half what they fetched on 

 enclosed land. Open-field farmers " breed four or five calves 

 from a wretched cow before they sell it, so that a great quantity 

 of food is sadly misapplied." It was from this " post-legged, 

 square-buttocked breed of demi-elephants," to use Marshall's 

 description, that the Navy beef of England was chiefly provided. 

 The open-field sheep had not improved. " I never," says Young, 

 apparently with surprise, " saw a fold in the county, except in a 

 few open fields about Stamford ; . . . but the sheep are miserably 

 bad ; in wool 8 or 9 to the tod." In the East Riding 2 of Yorkshire 

 (1794) the pasture commons varied " in extent from two hundred 

 to two thousand five hundred acres, and all of them may be con- 

 verted into useful land by drains, sub-divisions, plantations, and 

 other improvements. . . . When commons are not stinted in 

 proportion to the stock they are capable of keeping, very little 

 benefit is derived from them. ... It is not a little extraordinary 

 to see a starving stock upon a common of five hundred acres soaked 

 with water, when the expense of a few shillings for each right, 

 prudently laid out in drains and bridges, would double its value. 

 Such is the obstinacy of men, and so difficult is it to induce them 

 to form the same opinion ; though an union of sentiment would 

 much more materially promote their interest." 



Norfolk 3 in 1796 contained 80,000 acres of unimproved commons, 

 and about one-fourth of the arable area of the county was tilled 

 on the common or open-field system. " There is," says the Reporter, 

 who was the well-known Nathaniel Kent, " still a considerable deal 

 of common-field land in Norfolk, though a much less proportion 

 than in many other counties ; for notwithstanding common rights 



> Young's Lincolnshire (1799), pp. 303, 374. 



* Leatham's East Riding (1794), p. 39. 



Kent's Norfolk (1796), pp. 6, 32, 72, 73, 81, 158. 



