EARLY HISTORY OF CLOVER, 85 



which we now class among our more valuable " forage crops/' 

 although this branch of husbandry cannot be said to have 

 been introduced into this country until about the middle 

 of the seventeenth century. The Medicks appear to have 

 been the favourite forage plant in Roman farming, several 

 species of which were cultivated, and among others our 

 Lucerne Medicago sativa was in great estimation. Be- 

 sides these, Pliny speaks of the Trifolium; and Dios- 

 corides, who flourished in the time of* Nero, describes 

 and has left us drawings of the vetch, sainfoin, clover, &c. 



Towards the latter days of the Roman empire, agri- 

 culture, which had advanced with its greatness, retro- 

 ceded with its decline. The luxuries and corruptions then 

 prevailing appear to have withered the intellectual face of 

 the empire, and all the arts, useful as well as ornamental, 

 lapsed back to their former neglected condition. The 

 religious houses that sprung up so plentifully throughout 

 Europe after the fall of the Roman empire, were the sole 

 depositories of agricultural as well as of other knowledge ; 

 and through those centuries of turmoil that constitute our 

 early and middle ages, when fields were ravaged, crops 

 destroyed, and the ploughshare and pruning-hook laid 

 aside for the sword, the land was given back to the wild 

 treatment of nature, and the cares and labour of man con- 

 fined to those crops which furnished the supplies of his 

 own daily food. The flocks and herds were left to their 

 own resources; the lessons of imperial Rome were for- 

 gotten, and were not revived until the internal feuds and 

 struggles had ceased, and peace and quietude had again 

 spread the mantle of security over the land. 



The seventeenth century forms rather an important epoch 

 in the history of agriculture, as it is marked by the introduc- 

 tion of two very valuable additions to our " Farm Crops/' 

 namely, red clover and turnips; and also by the more 

 general practice of inclosing the cultivated land by hedges 



