242 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



The badger made his dark and tortuous hole on the side of 

 every hill where the copsewood grew thick. The wild-cats 

 were frequently heard by night wailing round the lodges of 

 the rangers of Whittlebury and Needwood. Tlie yellow- 

 breasted martin was still pursued in Cranbourne Chase for 

 his fur, reputed inferior only to that of the sable. Fen eagles, 

 measuring more than nine feet between the extremities of the 

 wings, preyed on fish along the coast of Norfolk. On all the 

 downs, from the British Channel to Yorkshire, huge bustards 

 strayed in troops of fifty or sixty, and were often hunted with 

 grayhounds. The marshes of Cambridgeshire and Lincolnshire 

 were covered, during some months of every year, by immense 

 crowds of cranes. Some of these races the progress of cultiva- 

 tion has extirpated. Of others the numbers are so much dimin- 

 ished that men crowd to gaze at a specimen as at a Bengal tiger 

 or a Polar bear. 



" According to the computation made in the year 1696 by 

 Gregory King," only seventy years after Bacon burnt his books 

 and died, " the whole quantity of wheat, rye, barley, oats and 

 beans then annually grown in the kingdom was somewhat less 

 than ten millions of quarters. The wheat, which was then 

 cultivated only on the strongest clay, and consumed only by 

 those who were in easy circumstances, he estimated at less than 

 two millions of quarters. Charles Davenant, an acute and well- 

 informed, though most unprincipled and rancorous politician, 

 differed from King as to some of the items of the account, but 

 came to nearly the same general conclusion. 



" The rotation of crops was very imperfectly understood. It 

 was known, indeed, that some vegetables lately introduced into 

 the island, particularly the turnip, afforded excellent nutriment 

 in winter to sheep and oxen ; but it was not yet the practice to 

 feed cattle in this manner. It was therefore by no means easy 

 to keep them alive during the season when the grass is scanty. 

 They were killed in great numbers and salted at the beginning 

 of cold weather, and during several months even the gentry 

 tasted scarcely any fresh animal food, except game and river 

 fish, which were accordingly much more important articles of 

 housekeeping than at present. It appears from the North- 

 umberland Household Book, that in the reign of Henry 

 the Seventh fresh meat was never eaten, even by the gentle- 



