EXTENT OF CULTIVATION. 415 



said to have given its name to one of the oldest cities in 

 the west of England Glastonbury, originally called 

 " Glastum," from the Celtic glas, blue the city being so 

 named from the large cultivation of the dye-producing 

 plant woad in its immediate vicinity. Notwithstanding 

 these records of its existence and use in this country from 

 the most remote periods, we have no very distinct records 

 of its regular cultivation as a crop anterior to about 1582, 

 when it was introduced from the Continent, where, espe- 

 cially in France and the Low Countries, it had been culti- 

 vated successfully for many years before. In Gerarde we 

 find it figured and described under the name of Glastrum 

 sativum. He says of it, " that it serveth to dye arid 

 color cloath : profitable to some few and hurtefull to 

 many/' Previous to the introduction of indigo, the dye 

 obtained by fermentation from the leaves of this plant 

 formed the staple blue of all European dyers, and preju- 

 dice long upheld in this country the interest of its growers 

 against the substitution of its more brilliant and economi- 

 cal foreign rival. Of late years, the cultivation of woad 

 has almost entirely ceased to be carried on in this country. 

 It is now rarely to be met with anywhere but in Lin- 

 colnshire, and there only to a very limited extent. For- 

 merly the great clothing districts of the west of England 

 and Yorkshire, by furnishing markets for the produce, 

 offered inducements for its cultivation in their neigh- 

 bourhood ; the increased facilities of transport of the pre- 

 sent day have, however, quite neutralized the advantages 

 of proximity in an article so comparatively small and 

 unimportant as regards its bulk to the general cost of 

 production of the articles in whose manufacture it is used, 

 and the cultivation of woad is now limited to those dis- 

 tricts where, from the nature and character of the soils, 

 it can be grown most profitably, irrespective of their con- 

 nection with the centres of consumption. Although in- 



