Grassland and Pas tier e 69 



The evolution of the pasture-field touches another problem of the country- 

 side. With the decay of the feudal system, and labour troubles following the 

 Black Death (1348), a system of enclosure of waste set in, with the formation of 

 cattle and sheep-runs by larger landowners, as the preponderant feature of 

 English Agriculture, which became more intensified in the fifteenth and sixteenth 

 centuries, and has gone on continuously to the detriment of the small holders 

 for many centuries. 1 As the dispossessed peasantry lost the mainstay of their 

 existence, in the suppression of their 'commoner's rights' to free grazing and 

 collection of fuel from waste woodland, successive enclosures became a fertile 

 source of rebellion and rioting, traces of which are found at the present day. 2 

 Pasture represents land set apart for the cultivation of special grasses 

 (though now including clovers of the agriculturalist), just as woodland is 

 set apart for the cultivation of a few kinds of tree by the forester. All other 

 plants come under the designation of * weeds ', some of which may be more 

 injurious than others (Ranunculus acris, Rhinanthus Crista-galli). The plant- 

 types of general pasture commonly include some 100 forms, as herbaceous 

 perennials in closest association, leaving no room for the intrusion of annuals, 

 or the establishment of the weeds of cultivated land. The grasses number 

 about 30. There seems at first no special reason why grasses should be 

 selected as valuable for fodder and hay, more than other herbaceous peren- 

 nials ; but as a matter of practical experience they are found to be so, as 

 grasses again make good recovery, and may be even improved by the close- 

 cropping of grazing animals. A few types of the Leguminosae, more parti- 

 cularly the clovers (Trifolium sp.), are in practice the only Dicotyledonous 

 perennials encouraged in the hay-field for their food-value. 3 



The grasses may be distinguished as: (i) original inhabitants of the 

 Woodland (Anthoxanthum odoratum^Festuca elatior) ; (2,) as probably iritru- 

 sive from dry grassland areas outside the district (Cynosurus cristatus^ 

 Phleum pratense, Festuca ovina, forms) ; or (3) from the Continent by the 

 earliest immigrants bringing cattle. Under this last heading may be possibly 

 included many of the finest pasture-grasses which do not occur in competition 

 with other types beyond the pastures (Festuca pratensis, F. loliacea^Alopecurus 

 pratensis, Bromtis commutatus]. In more modern times Lolium perenne 

 owes its wide distribution to its early recognition as the most reliable grass- 

 crop on any soil ; while the more recent introduction L. italicum is rarely 

 found far from direct cultivation. Of the origin of the common grasses of 



also for 'improving any cold, sour, clay- weeping, ground ' ; and, it may be added, at a maximum 

 growth on the Sewage Farm. 



1 Orr (1922), A Short History of British Agriculture, p. 48. 



2 The injustice to the cottager when his grazing-rights and fuel-rights of the common waste land 

 were cut off, may be gauged by taking the previous estimate of the difficulty of keeping a cow on an 

 acre of good pasture. Such grazing-rights of keeping a couple of cows and 2 or 3 ponies would be 

 equivalent to the possession of 10 acres of rough pasture without expense or responsibility, while the 

 rough wood would supply the year's fuel. To take this from men already living on a narrow margin 

 as small holders or farm-labourers, implies immediate ruin, which a once-popular estimate of ' three 

 acres and a cow ' would not go far to alleviate. Hence peasants' rebellions and riots have been the 

 familiar accompaniment of 'enclosures' to the present time: Otmoor, a wet-waste of 2,000-3,000 

 acres, was so enclosed (1830), and provided with hedges; rioting took place at St. Giles' Fair. 

 A relic of ' open ' Brasenose was fenced in 1922. 



It is interesting to compare attempts at establishing small holders on the land at the present 

 time, with little assistance beyond their own holdings which cannot supply everything in the way of 

 fuel and cattle-feed, and at the same time grow crops. The biology of country-life does not change 

 very greatly. According to Ashby (1917), Small Holdings in Oxfordshire, p. 177, short of intensive 

 market-gardening or poultry-fanning, implying the neighbourhood of a large town, there is no 

 possibility in agriculture of a family existing on less than 30 acres. Yet 30 acres was also the 

 average holding of villeins under the Norman Manorial system with full Common-rights (Orr 

 1922, p. 23). 



3 Percival (1910), Agricultural Botany, p. 556. Trifolium pratense, T. repens, T. hybridum 

 T. minus, Lotus corniculatiis, Medicago lupulina ; as fodder-crops Medicago saliva (Lucerne), 

 Onobrychis sativa (Sainfoin), Trifolium incarnatum, Anthyllis Vulneraria\ hence the relative 

 abundance of such plants locally is no criterion of their indigenous value. 



