156 READINGS IN RURAL ECONOMICS 



the descriptions of estates, are always specified with great exactness, 

 as are the services in harvesting. Just so it was in the early settle- 

 ment of New England ; the broad meadows, with their coarse wild 

 grass, furnished the only supply of winter food for cattle, and were 

 an essential part of every farm. Peas, beans, and vetches were largely 

 cultivated in the Middle Ages for the food of cattle and horses. 



Let us pass now to the principal crops, the cereals which 

 formed almost the sole object of the purely agricultural operations. 

 No doubt the implements were rude and clumsy, and the proc- 

 esses unscientific ; nevertheless these were not at the lowest 

 stage. The English plow, in the Middle Ages, to judge from con- 

 temporary pictures, was a heavy, two-handled article, often with a 

 very large wheel, or pair of wheels, to help support and guide it. 

 The manuring of the land was probably not very thorough or sys- 

 tematic, although both marl and dung are mentioned, and direc- 

 tions are given that the manure be covered, so that its qualities be 

 not washed away in the rain. It was common to manure land by 

 penning the sheep upon it ; and it was a usual prerogative of feudal 

 lords to require their serfs to keep their sheep in folds upon the 

 lord's land (the so-called jus foldae). As to the use of dung and 

 marl, I find in a writer of the day some elaborate and mysterious 

 rules which I find it very hard to comprehend, and those which 

 I can understand I am informed are mostly nonsense. 



There was a regular system of fallows, and in connection with 

 it a rude rotation of crops, but not, it may be supposed, in any 

 sense a scientific rotation, designed to recuperate the powers of 

 the land by the qualities of different crops. It was only that cer- 

 tain of the cereals were best sown in the fall and others in the 

 spring, and it was more convenient to sow the spring corn in the 

 field used the previous year for the winter crop than to continue 

 each crop upon the same land. There were various systems of 

 rotation in use, but far the most common was that known as the 

 three-field system, in which the arable lands were divided into 

 three large fields, for the purpose of a triennial rotation. In the 

 so-called " tenement lands," which were occupied and cultivated 

 by the peasants for themselves, but as tenants of the lord of the 

 manor, each peasant had a strip in each of these fields a 



