1922.] Wisuom and Folly of Ancient Homk-Fahmkks. 



•207 



to be grazed in May. Neither mustard nor vetches seem to 

 have been used for eatch-crops. 



The Introduction of Clover, Grasses and Turnips. Pitz- 

 herberl and Tusser knew no other country than England. 

 Barnaby Googe was both a traveller and a translator. His 

 Foure Boole* of Husbandry (1577) are translated from the 

 Latin work of Conrad Heresbach published at Cologne, and a 

 few pages are added of Googe's own observations on agricul- 

 tural practices. The farming of the Low Countries, with 

 which the book deals, was the most advanced in Europe. 

 But, then as well as subsequently, English farmers looked on 

 foreign innovations with suspicion. They had their full share 

 of the national insularity. In this case they lost an oppor- 

 tunity. Googe gives the first hint of the new resources which, 

 200 years later, so marvellously enriched English farmers. He 

 recommended not only the use of rape, but that of what he 

 calls " Trefoil or Burgundian grass." " There can be," he 

 says, " no better fodder devised for cattle." He also suggests, 

 as supplying valuable food for live stock, the field cultivation 

 of turnips. In the Low Countries they were extensively 

 cultivated in the fields. In England, they were only just 

 beginning to struggle into gardens as vegetables for human 

 use to be " boyled and eaten with flesshe." 



Whether Googe succeeded in converting any English farmers 

 to the value of roots and grasses is unknown. As he gives a 

 list of men whose farming was an object-lesson to their less 

 advanced neighbours, it is possible that some may have tried 

 the suggestion. If there w T ere any converts, they were few. 

 A dry year may have discouraged the experiment of roots. 

 It may have stiffened the resistance of farmers to their intro- 

 duction, and confirmed their stereotyped answer that the new 

 crops would not grow in England because their ancestors had 

 never grown them. It was not till more than 16*0 years later 

 that the new resources began, on any general scale, to struggle 

 into use in this country. 



In clover and turnips new 7 sources of wealth were thus offered 

 to farmers as early as 1577. The want of winter-keep, for 

 instance, accounted for the half-starved condition of English 

 live stock, which only Survived the winter as skin and bone. 

 Here was a partial solution of the problem, and a means of 

 carrying a larger and a heavier head of cattle and sheep. The 

 new crops were destined to be (he pivots of mixed farming. 



