204 HISTORY OF AGRICULTURE 



About the same date the Complete English Farmer reckoned 

 that the occupier of a farm of 500 acres (300 arable, 200 pas- 

 ture), ought to have a capital of ^1,500, and estimated that, after 

 paying expenses and maintaining his family, he could put by 

 £^0 a year ; ' but this capital was much beyond what farmers 

 in general can attain to.'^ 



The controversy of horses versus oxen for working purposes 

 was still raging, and Young favoured the use of oxen ; for the 

 food of horses cost more, so did their harness and their shoeing, 

 they are much more liable to disease, and oxen when done 

 with could be sold for beef. One stout lad, moreover, could 

 attend to 8 or 10 oxen, for all he had to do was to put 

 their fodder in the racks and clean the shed ; no rubbing, no 

 currying or dressing being necessary. No beasts fattened 

 better than oxen that had been worked. A yoke of oxen 

 would plough as much as a pair of horses and carry a deeper 

 and truer furrow, while they were just as handy as horses in 

 wagons, carts, rollers, &c. William Marshall, the other great 

 agricultural writer of the end of the eighteenth century, agreed 

 with Young, yet in spite of all these advantages horses were 

 continually supplanting oxen. 



Among the improvements in agriculture was the introduction 

 of broad-wheeled wagons ; narrow- wheeled ones were usual, 

 and these on the turnpikes were only allowed to be drawn by 

 4 horses so that the load was small, but broad-wheeled wagons 

 might use 8 horses. The cost of the latter was £^0 against 

 £1^ for the former.^ 



Young's opinion of the labouring man, like Tull's, was not a 

 high one. ' I never yet knew ', he says, ' one instance of any 

 poor man's working diligently while young and in health to 

 escape coming to the parish when ill or old.' This is doubtless 

 too sweeping. There must have been others like George Bar- 

 well, whom Marshall tells of in his Rural Economy of the Mid- 



^ Dissertations on Rural Subjects, p. 278. 

 ^ partner's Letters, p. 433. 



