210 
WI8C0NSI2^ STATE AGRICULTURAL SOCIETY, 
foals or cows with calves should feed upon these stubbles, under 
the penalty of a fine. 
In the mild winters of Europe, especially in Southern England, 
the pasturage is hardly suspended altogether any part of the win¬ 
ter; nevertheless, there must be more or less stall-feeding at this 
season, even here, and the hay crop was an important one. As I 
'have already said, there was no clover or artificial grass; all the 
more valuable were the natural meadows which, in the descriptions 
of estates, are always specified with great exactness, and the services 
in harvesting which are carefully enumerated. Just so it was in 
the early settlement of New England; the broad meadows, with 
their coarse wild grass, furnished the only supply of winter food for 
cattle, and were an essential part of every farm. Besides 
this, peas, beans and vetches were largely cultivated in the middle 
ages for the food of cattle and horses. 
Let us pass now to the principal crop, the cereals; that which 
formed almost the sole object of the purely agricultural operations. 
No doubt the implements were rude and clumsy, and the processes 
unscientific; nevertheless these were not at the lowest stage. The 
English plough, in the middle ages, to judge from contemporary 
pictures, was a heavy, two-handled article, often with a very large 
wheel, or pair of wheels, to help support and guide it. The ma¬ 
nuring of the land was probably not very thorough or systematic, al¬ 
though both marl and dung are mentioned, and directions are given 
that the manure be covered, so that its qualities be not washed 
away in the rain. It was common to manure land by penning the 
sheep upon it; and it was a usual prerogative of feudal lords to re¬ 
quire their serfs to keep their sheep in folds upon the lord’s land, 
(the so-called jus foldce). As to the use of dung and marl, I find 
in a writer of the day, some elaborate and mysterious rules, which 
I find it very hard to comprehend, and those which I can under¬ 
stand I am informed are mostly nonsense. 
There was a regular system of fallows, and in connection with it 
a rude rotation of crops, but not, it may be supposed, in any sense 
a scientific rotation, designed to recuperate the powers of the land 
by the qualities of different crops. It was only that certain of the 
cereals were best sown in the fall, and others in the spring; and it 
was more convenient to sow the spring corn in the field used the 
previous year for the winter crop, than to continue each crop upon 
