| 
CONFERENCE OF DELEGATES. 419 
correlated with the geological indications of the map. In certain areas the local 
Agricultural College would be able to supply a good deal of information about the 
characteristics of the soils of the parish, but as yet there has been no systematic soil 
survey all over the Kingdom. 
The next map should be a vegetation map, and, naturally, it will be closely con- 
nected with the geological or soil map. It should indicate the prevalence of woodland, 
marsh or pasture, the characteristic weeds of the arable land, the special features of 
the flora of the wild land, and the types of grasses characteristic of the pastures. Of 
course, there are parishes so uniform in their soil that this vegetation map may be of 
the simplest character, but there are many parishes possessing great and characteristic 
diversities of vegetation which children soon learn to recognise, especially as so many 
parishes were originally formed as strips cutting across the outcrops so as to provide a 
portion of each kind of soil for the needs of the parish. Alongside this map should 
be one showing the actual cropping followed in the parish in any particular year, the 
fields being coloured on a system and the crops being ascertained by actual inquiry. 
Lastly—and here is the point on which I desire particularly to address myself to 
the members of the Corresponding Societies—one would like to see a map or maps 
that would bring out the original settlement of the land, the manors, and the system 
of cultivation adopted before enclosure, and the date and method of enclosure. 
In all these matters the schoolmasters need the kind of help that can be provided 
by the Corresponding Societies and their members. Few rural schoolmasters are in a 
position to get all the information necessary for the maps I have indicated, but some 
local stimulus, help and sympathy would quickly produce a result in a good many 
schools, and once the work got a fair start, it would quickly spread. 
It is on this last point, the early agricultural history of the parishes, that 
assistance is most needed, not merely in the interests of the school but in order to 
preserve information which may easily become lost. 
It is to be remembered in this connection that the Law of Property (Amendment) 
Act of 1924, by extinguishing copyhold and practically doing away with the manor as 
a legal entity, at once renders unnecessary the preservation of a good number of early 
documents recording the customs of the manor. It is true that the Master of the 
Rolls is empowered by the Act to give instructions for the preservation of the 
manorial records and is taking steps to that end. But it is uncertain whether a list 
of all manors can be prepared, and in any case it is all too probable that many pertinent 
documents may be overlooked or removed from their place of origin as to make them 
difficult to trace. During the last few years, again, many of the great estates have 
been sold and broken up. This, then, is the opportunity for anyone interested in the 
past history of a particular parish to appeal to the stewards of manors, family solicitors 
and the like, for information as to records and estate maps, which may throw 
light on the enclosures and the early history of the land. In no case can one be sure 
of success ; even when an enclosure map and award is preserved, it only gives the state 
of the land after apportionment, which may not show any trace of the old open-field 
farming. Still, much more exists than is commonly supposed among title deeds and 
estate records, and I venture to submit that local societies could carry out a 
valuable piece of work by a systematic collection of such evidence as remains. 
The societies can do this far more effectively than individuals: a request from one 
of them would carry far more weight than one from a private person, being a guarantee 
that the inquiry is made for some general purpose which cannot be dismissed as idle 
curiosity. JI am able to show you copies of existing manorial records which will 
illustrate better than anything I can say the interest of the information that may be 
obtainable. But besides the documentary evidence, there still exists in many parishes " 
actual physical traces of the old farming. There are, of course, a few instances of 
manors still unenclosed, as in the well-known areas in the Isle of Axholme, or the less 
known parish of Crimscote, Warwickshire, where the heavy land has gone entirely out 
of cultivation, and has become a jungle of thorns and briars over the steep-sided 
strips of the old selions. But more often only a single field is left in which the old 
_ strips and baulks are evident, or even the word Common persists in a field name, 
where it is evident that it never meant common in the usual sense of waste of the 
manor. There are, again, fields now in grass showing the curved endings of the old 
ridge and furrow where the long ox-teams began to turn before the boundary was 
reached; or even the Lynchets, which are regarded as traces of a still earlier cultivation. 
Field names like Vineyard and Hop Garden speak of crops that have now disappeared. 
All these vestiges of the old social order should be noted down and made to play their 
° EE2 
