all the pasture in Wales
that of Cardigan is the chief. I speak of the same which is to be
found in the mountains there, where the hundredth part of the grass
growing is not eaten, but suffered to rot on the ground, whereby the
soil becometh matted and divers bogs and quickmoors made withal in
long continuance: because all the cattle in the country are not able
to eat it down. If it be accounted good soil on which a man may lay a
wand over night and on the morrow find it hidden and overgrown with
grass, it is not hard to find plenty thereof in many places of this
land. Nevertheless such is the fruitfulness of the aforesaid county
that it far surmounteth this proportion, whereby it may be compared
for batableness with Italy, which in my time is called the paradise
of the world, although by reason of the wickedness of such as dwell
therein it may be called the sink and drain of hell; so that whereas
they were wont to say of us that our land is good but our people
evil, they did but only speak it; whereas we know by experience that
the soil of Italy is a noble soil, but the dwellers therein far off
any virtue or goodness.

Our meadows are either bottoms (whereof we have great store, and
those very large, because our soil is hilly) or else such as we call
land meads, and borrowed from the best and fattest pasturages. The
first of them are yearly and often overflown by the rising of such
streams as pass through the same, or violent falls of land-waters,
that descend from the hills about them. The other are seldom or never
overflown, and that is the cause wherefore their grass is shorter
than that of the bottoms, and yet is it far more fine, wholesome, and
batable, sith the hay of our low meadows is not only full of sandy
cinder, which breedeth sundry diseases in our cattle, but also more
rowty, foggy, and full of flags, and therefore not so profitable for
store and forrage as the higher meads be. The difference furthermore
in their commodities is great; for, whereas in our land meadows we
have not often above one good load of hay, or peradventure a little
more in an acre of ground (I use the word _carrucata_, or _carruca_,
which is a wain load, and, as I remember, used by Pliny, lib. 33,
cap. 2), in low meadows we have sometimes three, but commonly two or
upwards, as experience hath oft confirmed.

Of such as are twice mowed I speak not, sith their later math is not
so wholesome for cattle as the first; although in the mou