43^ AGRICULTURE. 



good beer was a better and cheaper drink than any wine that 

 could be made in this country. Though, in 1565, in this reign, 

 the potato was introduced from Santa Fe, by Captain Hawkins, 

 yet it did not come into general use, even in gardens, for nearly 

 two centuries afterward. The principal agricultural authors, in 

 Elizabeth's reign, are Tusser, Googe, and Sir Hugh Platt. 



Hops, which had been introduced in the early part of the 

 sixteenth century, and on the culture of which a treatise was 

 published in 1574, by Reynolds Scott, are mentioned as a well- 

 known crop. Buckwheat was sown after barley, and hemp 

 and flax are mentioned as common crops. Enclosures must 

 have been numerous in several counties, and there is a very 

 good "comparison between champion (open fields) country, and 

 severall." 



The seventeenth century is distinguished by some important 

 improvements in agriculture, among which are the introduction 

 of clover and turnips into England, of hedges into Scotland and 

 Ireland, and the execution of extensive embankments and drain- 

 ages. Some useful writers also appeared, especially Norden, 

 Gabriel Plattes, Sir Richard Weston, Hartlibb, and Blythe. 

 For the adoption of the clover, as an agricultural plant, we are 

 indebted to Sir Richard Weston, who, in 1645, gives an account 

 of its culture in Flanders, where he says that he "saw it cutting 

 near Antwerp on the ist of June, 1644, being then two feet long 

 and very thick ; that he saw it cut again on the 2Qth of the same 

 month, being twenty inches long ; and a third time in August, 

 being eighteen inches long." Blythe, in 1653, is copious in his 

 directions for its cultivation, and Lisle, in the beginning of the 

 eighteenth century, speaks of it as commonly cultivated in 

 Hampshire, Wiltshire, Gloucestershire, and other counties. Tur- 

 nips were probably introduced as a field crop by the same patri- 

 otic author, though they may have been grown in the gardens 

 of the church establishments long before. "They are culti- 

 vated," he observes, "for feeding kine in many parts of England ; 

 but there is as much difference between what groweth in Flan- 

 ders and here, as between the same thing which groweth in a 

 garden and that which groweth wild in the fields." It is proba- 

 ble that the English turnips he alludes to were rape, which is 

 mentioned by Googe in 1586; but though Gerarde, in 1597, and 



