GREAT AGRICULTURAL WRITERS 129 



take extraordinary pains in soyling, ploughing, and dressing 

 their lands, and after the plow there goeth some three or four 

 with mattocks to break the clods and to draw up the earth out 

 of the furrows that the lands may lye round, and that the 

 water annoy not the seed (the water evidently often lying 

 long in the furrows between the great high ridges), and to that 

 end they most carefully cut gutters and trenches in all places. 

 And for the better enriching of their ploughing lands they cut 

 up, cast, and carry in the unplowed headlands and places of no 

 use. Their hearts, hands, eyes, and all their powers concurre 

 in one to force the earth to yield her utmost fruit ' ; and the 

 crops of wheat that rewarded this industry were sometimes 8 

 and 10 quarters to an acre. 



A short pamphlet called the Fruiterer s Secrets, published 

 in London in j 604, imparts some interesting and curious infor- 

 mation about fruit growing.^ There were then four sorts of 

 cherries in England, Flemish,^ English, Gascoyne, and black, 

 and the preserving of them from birds, always a burden on the 

 grower, the author says can be done by a gun or a sling ; the 

 worst enemies being jays and bullfinches, who ate stones and 

 all. Stone fruit should be gathered in dry weather, and after 

 the dew is off, for if gathered wet it loses colour and becomes 

 mildewed. If nettles newly gathered are laid at the bottom of 

 the basket and on the top of the fruit, they will hasten the 

 ripening of fruit picked unripe, and make it keep its colour. 



Those English farmers who still shake their apples from the 

 trees to fall and be bruised on the ground had better listen to 

 the careful directions for placing the ladder on the trees where 

 it will do no damage, as to the use of the gathering hook so 

 that the branches can be brought within easy reach of the 

 picker on his ladder, the wearing of a gathering apron, and the 

 emptying of it gently into the baskets. Green fern has the 

 same effect on pears packed for carriage as nettles on stone 



' These extracts are from the original edition in the Bodleian Library. 

 ''■ ' The FlaViders cherry excels ', says Worlidge, Syst. Agr., p. 97. 



CURTLER J^ 



