314 NATURAL HISTORY 



killed for winter use, were turned out soon after Michael- 

 mas to shift as they could through the dead months; so 

 that no fresh meat could be had in winter or spring. 

 Hence the marvellous account of the vast stores of 

 salted flesh found in the larder of the eldest Spencer 2 

 in the days of Edward the Second, even so late in the 

 spring as the 3d of May. It was from magazines like 

 these that the turbulent barons supported in idleness 

 their riotous swarms of retainers, ready for any disorder 

 or mischief. But agriculture is now arrived at such a 

 pitch of perfection, that our best and fattest meats are 

 killed in the winter ; and no man needs eat salted flesh, 

 unless he prefers it, that has money to buy fresh. 



One cause of this distemper might be, no doubt, the 

 quantity of wretched fresh and salt fish consumed by 

 the commonalty at all seasons as well as in Lent; 

 which our poor now would hardly be persuaded to 

 touch. 



The use of linen changes, shirts or shifts, in the room 

 of sordid and filthy woollen, long worn next the skin, is 

 a matter of neatness comparatively modern ; but must 

 prove a great means of preventing cutaneous ails. At 

 this very time, woollen instead of linen prevails among 

 the poorer Welsh, who are subject to foul eruptions 3 . 



The plenty of good wheaten bread that now is found 

 among all ranks of people in the south, instead of that 

 miserable sort which used in old days to be made of 



a Viz. six hundred bacons, eighty carcasses of beef, and six hundred 

 muttons. 



3 Mr. Rennie has remarked that the prevalent practice of wearing flan- 

 nel next the skin, is, in a medical point of view, liable to all the judicious 

 objections made by Mr. White : but the objections seem rather to sordid 

 and filthy woollen, long worn. If the skin be not unusually irritable, the 

 increased activity of the cutaneous circulation occasioned by the wearing 

 of frequent changes of flannel will rarely be productive of the minor evil 

 of eruptions; while, against the heavier inflictions of visceral inflamma- 

 tions and rheumatism, and the other serious consequences of checked 

 perspiration, it furnishes the most approved preventive that our variable 

 climate admits of. E. T. B. 



