Arable Land 
neither Saxon nor Celtic, but probably Neolithic. Yet 
even in a very sparsely settled country it was not surely 
so very admirable. 
The labourer had to trudge over miles daily to get to 
his own special plot. He could not permanently improve 
the soil, for the plots were usually changed every year. 
His cattle could neither be properly fed or in any way 
improved by breeding or selection. 
The enclosure of England was a wise and necessary 
proceeding. It required strong nerve and even brutality 
to carry it through, but the result has been to increase 
the harvests beyond calculation, and to afford a livelihood 
to many thousands more than could ever have existed 
on the Inishturk or Braunton system. 
Even in Saxon days there had been, as we have seen, 
some progress in the first reclaiming of waste. 
But the “stubbing up” and removal of the wild vege- 
tation is but a very small part of the labour necessary. 
Every field in England has been drained ; the ground 
has, in most places, been more or less levelled. Stones 
have been collected and taken off, and especially, for it is 
the one essential point in which civilised efficient agricul- 
ture differs from more or less savage backwood methods, 
every field has been enclosed. There were no wire 
fences in the days when England was made, such as now 
make enclosure a very much simpler affair for Australian, 
Canadian, or South American settlers. These enclosures 
were ditches which had to be dug with an immense ex- 
penditure of labour, or rough stone walls, or earthen 
banks planted with hawthorns, 
The work expended on an acre of land in draining, 
ditching, levelling, clearing, and fencing must have been 
enormous. However low one reckons the cost of labour 
to-day, the present value of an acre of ordinary land 
would be very much less than the cost of making it. 
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