GREAT AGRICULTURAL WRITERS 137 



with them. Fattening cattle were to have first bite at the 

 pastures, then draught cattle, and then sheep; after Midsummer, 

 when there is an extraordinary sweetness in the grass, suffer 

 the cattle to eat the grass closer till Lammas (August i). 

 Though some do not hold with him, he thinks reading and 

 writing not unprofitable to a husbandman, but not much 

 material ' to his bailiff ' ; for there is more trust in an honest 

 score chalked on a trencher than * in a commen writen scrowle '. 

 Landowners derived a good income from their woods and 

 coppices. An acre of underwood of twenty-one years' growth, 

 was at this time worth from £0,0 to £y:) ; of twelve years' 

 growth, £^ to £6 ; but on many of the best lands it was only 

 cut every thirty years.^ 



In 1743-3 oak timber was worth from i^d. to 18^. per 

 cubic foot and ash about lod. During the Napoleonic war 

 oak sold for ^s. 6d. a foot. 



In Blyth's Improver Improved we have one of the first 

 accounts of covered drains. The draining trench was to be 

 made deep enough to go the bottom of the ' cold spewing 

 moist water ' that feeds the flags and the rushes ; as for the 

 width ' use thine own liberty/, but be sure make it as straight 

 as possible. The bottom was to be filled in with faggots or 

 stones to a depth of 1 5 inches, a method in some parts retained 

 till comparatively modern times, with the top turf laid upon 

 them grass downward, and the drain filled in with the earth 

 dug out of it. 



A country gentleman at this date could keep up a good 

 establishment on an income which to-day would compel him 

 to live economically in a cottage. From the accounts of 

 Mr. Master, a landowner near Chiselhurst, it appears that a man 

 with an income of ;^30o or ;^400 a year could live in some 

 luxury, keep a stud of horses, and a considerable number of 

 servants.^ Some of them had no scruples about adding to 



* Whole Art of Husbandry (ed. 1635), ii. 144, and MS. accounts of 

 Mr. Chevallier of Aspall Hall, Suffolk. 

 . ^ Thorold Rogers, History 0/ Agriculture and Prices, v. 28. 



