h harrow,
and if necessary rolled. When the plants had two or three leaves each
they were to be hoed out, leaving them five or six inches apart,
though some slovenly farmers did not trouble to do this; but there is
no mention of hoeing between the rows. The fly was already recognized
as a pest, and soot and common salt were used to fight it. Folding
sheep in winter on turnips was then little practised, though Lawrence
strongly recommends it. According to Defoe,[380] Suffolk was
remarkable for being the first county where the feeding and fattening
of sheep and other cattle with turnips was first practised in England,
to the great improvement of the land, 'whence', he says, 'the practice
is spread over most of the east and south, to the great enriching of
farmers and increase of fat cattle.' There were great disputes as to
collecting the tithe, always a sore subject, on turnips; and the
custom seems to have been that if they were eaten off by store sheep
they went tithe free, if sheep were fattened on them the tithe was
paid.[381]

Clover, the other great novelty of the seventeenth century, was now
generally sown with barley, oats, or rye grass, about 15 lb. per acre.
This amount, sown on 2 acres of barley, would next year produce 2
loads worth about L5. The next crop stood for seed, which was cut in
August, the hay being worth L9, and the seed out of it, 300 lb., was
sold much of it for 16d. a lb., the sum realized in that year from the
2 acres being L30, without counting the aftermath. At this time most
of the seed was still imported from Flanders.[382] Much of the common
and waste land of England, not previously worth 6d. an acre, had been
by 1732 vastly improved through sowing artificial grasses on it, so
that various people had gained considerable estates.[383]

Carrots were also now grown as a field crop in places, especially near
London, two sorts being known, the yellow and red, used chiefly by
farmers for feeding their hogs.[384] Of wheat the names were many, but
there were apparently only seven distinct sorts, the Double-eared,
Eggshell, Red or Kentish, Great-bearded, Pollard, Grey, and Flaxen or
Lammas.[385] The growth of saffron had declined, though the English
variety was the best in the world, according to Lawrence, and except
in Cambridgeshire and about Saffron Walden it was little known.

Though it was still some time before the days of Bakewell, increased
attention was given to cattle-breeding; it was