HISTORICAL SURVEY 9 



The period known as the Middle Ages may conveniently be taken 

 as marking off a second stage. Before, as well as during this time, 

 there was a continuous gradual shifting of the geographical centre 

 of European population northwards from the Mediterranean, and 

 westwards towards the Atlantic. This period, which saw the rise 

 of large and wealthy trading towns in Italy, Germany, France, the 

 Netherlands, and Southern England, while the rural districts re- 

 mained comparatively poverty-stricken, was largely filled with 

 wars, both civil and foreign, in the countries named. Hunting 

 and warfare were the chief occupations of the nobility, who took 

 little interest in agricultural pursuits. At the same time, the 

 constant insecurity of movable property in most countries in con- 

 sequence of wars and unstable governments, directly discouraged 

 peaceful agriculture, and made its development generally impossible. 

 Only in some more favoured countries, where peaceful conditions 

 were maintained during longer intervals, such, for example, as 

 England, Flanders and Spain, was progress made in animal breeding, 

 notably of sheep, wool being then in great demand. Relatively to 

 the population game seems to have been quite abundant, but was 

 appropriated chiefly by the feudal nobility or by the wealthier 

 townsmen. These two latter classes, with their dependents and 

 retainers, apparently lived very well, and consumed great quantities 

 of meat, poultry and even dairy products of which the ordinary 

 peasant and serf population saw but little. 1 During the winter, 

 meat supplies were derived either from game which, with the large 

 forests still standing and the relatively sparse population, was 

 fairly abundant, or from the animals killed at the end of the 

 summer, and preserved by salting. Even as late as the end of the 

 16th century the use of winter fodder crops and the systematic 

 enclosure of meadows for hay, making it possible to carry cattle 

 stock in proper condition through the winter, do not seem to have 

 been widely practised. Man was still very much the slave of the 

 seasons. During the later Middle Ages the gradual clearing of 

 large areas of forest, the introduction of firearms, the extermination 

 of beasts of prey in the more populated parts, and the more settled 

 nature of governments, made both general agriculture and animal 

 raising more widespread and more productive, thus marking a 

 distinct advance upon the earlier part of the same period. A sum- 

 mary of the position during the Middle Ages is difficult by reason 

 of the differing conditions at different times, and in various coun- 

 tries at the same time. In general, it is to be noted that climatic 

 conditions made more animal food necessary than among the Greeks 

 and Romans of classical times, especially when it is remembered 

 that a much larger proportion of the population lived beyond reach 

 of sea-fisheries, and that vegetable oil was much less available for 



1 According to Schmoller. the consumption of meat in Frankfurt on the 

 Main and Nurnberg in the early 14th century was between 120 and 150 kg. 

 per capita, or more than double the present consumption in England, 

 Grundfiss Der All^enieinen Volkswirt<chaft. Vol. 11. p. 132. 



