GREGORY KING 



^55 



'they exceedingly enriched his land for many years after.' 

 The bones then used were marrow-bones and fish bones, or 

 ' whatever hath any oiliness or fatness in it ', but the bones 

 of horses and other animals were also used, burnt before 

 being applied to the land, crushing not being thought of till 

 many years after. 



In 1688 Gregory King,^ who was much more accurate 

 than most statisticians of his time, gave the following esti- 

 mate of the land of England and Wales : — 



He valued the live stock of England and Wales at £iS\ 

 millions, and estimated the produce of the arable land in 

 England at : 



The same statistician drew up a scheme of the income and 



' Houghton, about the same time, said England contained 28 to 29 

 million acres, of which 12 millions lay waste {Collections, iv. 11), In 1907 

 the Board of Agriculture returned the total area of England and Wales, 

 excluding water, at 37,130,344 acres. 



