48 THE OX AND THE DAIRY. 



In fact, we had not wherewith to feed cattle in winter, and 

 the art of stalling was not imagined. " The roast beef of old 

 England," partial as we have ever been, as a nation, to this 

 sort of animal diet, was a very different thing to the roast 

 beef of the present day ; and then, it was not the diet of the 

 middle or lower classes, the wealthy alone could procure it ; 

 and that only during the summer, while the cattle fed in the 

 pastures, and throve on the natural herbage ; but, in October 

 and November, cattle were slaughtered for winter consump- 

 tion ; the carcass was cut up, and put into brine, and during 

 that season nothing but salt meat could be obtained ; we mean 

 by those who could afford to purchase it. Salt fish was the 

 ordinary or staple animal food of the lower classes ; and from 

 this, and the want of fruits, roots, greens, legumes, &c., 

 dreadful diseases were engendered, and (as cleanliness was 

 out of the question) became perpetuated ; now smoulder- 

 ing, and now, the season of the year concurring, break- 

 ing out, and depopulating towns, villages, and hamlets. 

 We are not speaking of remote times, but of comparatively 

 recent periods. " Three or four centuries ago," says Gilbert 

 White, " before there were any inclosures, sown grasses, field 

 turnips, or hay, all the cattle that had grown fat in summer, 

 and were not killed for winter use, were turned out soon after 

 Michaelmas, to shift as they could through the dead months, 

 so that no fresh meat could be had in winter or spring. 

 Hence the marvellous account of the stores of salted flesh 

 found in the larder of the eldest Spencer, in the days of 

 Edward the Second, even so late in the spring as the third of 

 May (viz. six hundred boars, eighty carcases of beef, and six 

 hundred of sheep). It was from magazines like these that 

 the turbulent barons supported in idleness their riotous 

 swarm of retainers, ready for any disorder or mischief. But 

 agriculture is now arrived at such a pitch of perfection that 

 our best and fattest meats are killed in winter ; and no man 

 needs eat salted flesh, unless he prefer it, that has money to 

 buy fresh." But there were thousands, the serfs of the soil, 

 who had no money to buy either salted or fresh meat, and a 

 little reflection will serve to show what their condition must 

 have been in the olden time of merry England, had not the 

 religious establishments, the abbeys and priories, on which it 

 is now the fashion to pour obloquy, expended their revenues 

 for the good of the district for the benefit of the poor and 

 the starving. 



Agriculture, at this period, was in a rude state ; whole 



