546 PARLIAMENTARY COLBERTISM
LD. 1689
—1776.
of raising
stock and
airy
farming.
improves
ments in
wllage
‘n the
snghteenth
rentury
nuch given to the growing of cereals, but they were adepts
in cattle-breeding and dairy farming. Englishmen were
much impressed with the desirability of imitating them, by
growing Toot crops and artificial grasses, so as to have
better means for feeding stock during winter. During the
preceding century, grazing had been restricted; in the
seventeenth, efforts were made to promote it with regard
bo cattle; the very statute, which gives fresh opportunity
for the export of corn, is strictly protective against the
importation of fat cattle, as it had been found by experience
that the English cattle-breeders were suffering from foreign
competition?; and a few years later the cattle-farmers of
[reland® were prohibited from continuing an export trade
which was proving very profitable. We may gather from
Defoe’s Tour that English farmers who had devoted them-
selves to this occupation were prospering greatly in the
sarlier half of the eighteenth century? even before the time
shen Bakewell did so much to improve the breeds of stock
of every kind®
It is obvious, however, that improved methods were also
being introduced with regard to the cultivation of cereals.
Very full information. on the changes which were taking
James I. to introduce the cultivation of mulberry trees, so that the English might
se able to provide the raw material for the silk manufacture (Hartlib’s Legacy,
0. 72), a project which was eagerly taken up in France, Fagniez, op. cit.
1 Root crops appear to have been introduced to some extent as a course of
husbandry. Weston refers to them (Discourse of Husbandris used in Brabant
11652), p. 25); also Worlidge (op. cit. p. 46). Arthur Young had occasion to
-riticise the manner of growing turnips which had become traditional at the date
of his tours; but on the other hand it does not appear that much practical result
‘ollowed from the recommendation of clover (Weston, Discourse of Husbandrie,
L1; Hartlib’s Legacy, 1), sainfoin and lucerne as means of cleaning the fields; the
sultivation of these grasses seems to have been one of the distinctive improve-
ments of the eighteenth century. .
% 15 Charles II. ¢. 7, § 13.
¢ 18 and 19 Charles IL ¢. 2, An Act against importing cattle from Ireland, and
ther parts beyond the seas.
4 Defoe, Tour (1724) (1. Letter i. p. 90), notes the existence of wealthy tenants
on the dairy farms of High Suffolk. Some had stock worth £1000 “in Cows only.”
§ Compare the insertion in Defoe’s Tour on the improved pasture at Painshill
in Surrey (1748), 1. 239. This is not in the edition of 1724. The remark on the
increase in the value of pasture near Yarmouth (from 5s. to 20s. an acre), is also
an insertion. Ib. 1. 63.
8 See below, p. 556 n. 2.
