PROGRESSIVE AGRICULTURE. 225 



these in small quantities. Potatoes, squashes, turnips, car- 

 rots and cabbages were not known in England till the six- 

 teenth century. In the days of Henry VIII., Queen 

 Catherine was obliged to send to the continent for supplies 

 for her table. The principal food supply of the peasants at 

 this time was bread made of barley, ground in the quern or 

 hand-mill. 



In these days the peasants, as tenants of the soil, had no 

 security for their property, being held responsible for the 

 debts of the landlord for an amount equal to their entire 

 possessions. Later, they were held only for the amount of 

 rent actually due from them. Throughout Europe the con- 

 dition of the peasant (working farmer, we should call him) 

 was no better than in England, — a struggle for mere ex- 

 istence. 



We have seen that in Spain and portions of the East 

 much had, in earlier days, been done in certain directions to 

 develop the resources of the soil ; but this had been done by 

 such slow and expensive and oppressive methods, — which 

 afterwards, partly, at least, fell into disuse, — and had been 

 confined to such comparatively small sections, that the era 

 of real progress in agriculture can hardly be said to have 

 dawned till the sixteenth century, when Europe awoke from 

 her indefinite drowsiness, and men began to think. From 

 this time onward there has been continued progress, — slow 

 at first, from necessity, but a real uplifting of those classes 

 engaged in agricultural pursuits. In 1523, Sir Anthony 

 Fitzherbert, who prided himself on being " a farmer of forty 

 years' standing," issued the first work on agriculture ever 

 published in England, which he entitled the " Boko of Hus- 

 bandrie." Following this, the same author issued a volume 

 on land surveying. In touching upon some of the necessi- 

 ties of the fin'mer of his day, Fitzherbert says, "A hous- 

 bande cannot thryve by his corne without cattcll, nor by his 

 cattell without corne"; and fartlicr he says, " Shepe, in 

 myne opinion, is the most profitablest cattell that any man 

 can have." 



This "opinion," coming down to us through three and a 

 half centuries, during which theories have exploded, and on 

 their ashes other theories have risen to explode, entitles the 



