282 KALM'S ENGLAND. 



farm and possessions all to himself, when he gets to 

 manage and cultivate them according to his own dis- 

 cretion. Around Little Gaddesden and on all Chiltum-land 

 every farmer more or less had his own severalties which 

 he afterwards divided into small inclosures by hedges. 

 There was one inclosure sown with wheat, another with 

 barley, turnips, pease, oats, sainfoin, clover, trifolium, 

 tares, potatoes, or whatever he wished. 



While the fields were lying fallow, he could sow it with 

 turnips, feed sheep on it, and afterwards plough down the 

 remaining bitten turnips, and have thereby a much greater 

 advantage than if he had left it fallow. In short, he 

 could in a thousand ways improve his property and earn 

 money. On the other hand, here about Ivinghoe, where 

 the common fields are everywhere in use, no hedges are 

 seen. Nor are there here any pease or kinds of grass 

 sown as fodder for sheep, cows, horses and [T. I. p. 279] 

 swine. When wheat, barley, some oats, beans, and 

 turnips at anyone's farm are excepted, they had nothing 

 more. 



Nor had they any turnip land to feed sheep upon. 

 Therefore they were deprived of the advantage of getting 

 to sell any fat sheep or other cattle, &c. The reason 

 they gave for all this was that their arable was common 

 field, allmaninge, which lay in teg-skifte, and thus 

 came to lie every other year fallow, when one commoner 

 always had to accommodate his crops to the others ; but 

 the principal reason of all was said to be that on a common 

 land no one has freedom to inclose his strips, without 

 a special permission and A ct of Parliament. 



The 6th April, 1748. 



In the morning we set out again, with the same man 

 who accompanied us the day before, on a walk to a place 

 where they dig the white, hard, chalky stone of which 



