Clare Island Survey — Agriculture and its History. 5 7 



might have been used for the purpose. 1 At the same time there is a 

 possibility that, if the Germans had any other grain than millet, it may have 

 been oats ; for, after saying that the oat is the lowest of all kinds of ' corn ' 

 and that barley degenerates into it, Pliny adds further that it takes the place 

 of ' corn ' among the Germans since they sow it and have nothing else from 

 which to make porridge. 2 



Id support of Pliny's statement, it might be pointed out that the oat was 

 not an Aegypto-Semitic or Eoman crop — at any rate no Eoman agricultural 

 writer mentions it as such 3 — and, so, was unlikely to have reached Britain 

 through the Eomans. But, since it was grown in Britain — especially towards 

 the north — in the Middle Ages, it was more likely to have come in either 

 through the Anglo-Saxons or the Norsemen, and therefore may have been 

 grown by the Germans in Pliny's time. 



This excursion into the early history of agriculture in Germany has been 

 necessary in order to get a clear view of that of England, and thence to get 

 some notion of its probable course in Ireland. 



For many hundred years after Tacitus, Teutonic agriculture leaves no 

 written records ; and such as are first met with are so meagre and scant that 

 they can be read only in the light of researches and literature dealing with 

 much more recent times. The long gap must be filled in from both ends. 



It is impossible to read English agricultural literature of the seventeenth 

 and eighteenth centuries without being impressed with the fact that at that 

 time there were two concurrent systems in England, viz. the " Inclosed " and 

 the " Open Field " systems : the former comparatively new, and increasing ; 

 the latter uneconomic, wasteful, and old. All through the eighteenth century 

 and well into the nineteenth there was agitation against the old system, and 

 between "1710 when the first Inclosure Bill was passed in England" and 

 1849 over seven million acres of " Open Field " land were " inclosed " by 

 statute. 4 



A typical example of the open field system might be described as follows : — 

 The population lived all together in a village. Their houses stood separately 

 each in the midst of a small piece of ground, frequently called the " yard," in 

 which were grown flax, cabbages, carrots, and sometimes a few other vegetables. 

 The land around the village was divided into three great tillage fields of nearly 



1 Meyer's Conversationslexikon says that the Crimean Tartars brew a beer from millet (Hirse) ; 

 and Sienkewicz, in one of his works, -writes of people who lived north of the Caspian Sea two 

 hundred and fifty years ago drinking- spirits distilled from millet. 



3 Primnm omnium frumenti vitium avena est, et hordeum in eam degererat siu ut ipsa 

 frumenti sit instar, quippe cum Germaniae populi serant earn, neque alia pulte vivanl (Nat. Hist., 

 Buok xviii.) 



3 See Professor John Wilson's Farm Crops. 



4 Porter's Progress of the Natiou, 1815, p. 157. 



