of Selborne 189 



•u'hen he contemplates how nearly this pest is eradicated, 

 and observes that a leper now is a rare sight. He will, 

 moreover, when engaged in such a train of thought, 

 naturally inquire for the reason. This happy change 

 perhaps may have originated and been continued from 

 the much smaller quantity of salted meat and fish now 

 eaten in these kingdoms ; from the use of linen next the 

 skin ; from the plenty of better bread ; and from the 

 profusion of fruits, roots, legumes, and greens, so common 

 in every family. Three or four centuries ago, liefore 

 there were any enclosures, sown-grasses, field-turnips, or 

 field-carrots, or hay, all the cattle which had grown fat 

 in summer, and were not killed for winter-use, were 

 turned out soon after Michaelmas 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^ in the days of Edward the 

 Second, even so late iti the spring as the third 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 

 need 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 Ixnt ; 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 Welch, who are suliject to foul eruptions. 



The plenty of good wheaten bread that now is found 

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



^ Vtz. : Six hundred bacons, eighty carcasses of beeT, and six 

 hundred muttons. 



