ish by a crowd
of people who knocked down the leading horse, broke the wagon in
pieces, cut the sacks, and strewed about the corn, with threats that
they would do the like to all who sold wheat to export.[428] While
England was paying farmers to export wheat she was also importing,
though in plentiful years importers had a very bad time. In 1730 there
were lying at Liverpool 33,000 windles (a windle--220 lb.) of imported
corn, unsaleable owing to the great crop in England.[429] The year
1740 was distinguished by one of the severest winters on record. From
January 1 to February 5 the thermometer seldom reached 32 deg., and the
cold was so intense that hens and ducks, even cattle in their stalls
died of it, trees were split asunder, crows and other birds fell to
the ground frozen in their flight. This extraordinary winter was
followed by a cold and late spring; no verdure had appeared by May; in
July it was still cold, and thousands of acres of turnips rotted in
the ground. Among minor misfortunes may be noticed the swarms of
grasshoppers who devastated the pastures near Bristol at the end of
August 1742,[430] and the swarms of locusts who came to England in
1748 and consumed the vegetables.[431]

The cattle plague of 1745[432] was so severe that owing to the
scarcity of stock great quantities of grass land were ploughed up,
which helped to account for the fact that in 1750 the export of corn
from England reached its maximum; though the main cause of this was
the long series of excellent seasons that set in after 1740.[433] The
cattle plague also raged in 1754 in spite of an Order in Council that
all infected cattle should be shot and buried 4 ft. deep, and pitch,
tar, rosin, and gunpowder burnt where infected cattle had died, and
cow-houses washed with vinegar and water. Such were the sanitary
precautions of the time.[434] In 1756 came another bad year, corn was
so scarce that there were many riots; the king expressed to Parliament
his concern at the suffering of the poor, and the export of corn was
temporarily prohibited. The fluctuations in price are remarkable: in
1756, before the deficiency of the harvest was realized, wheat was
22s. and it went up at the following rate: Jan., 1757, 49s.; Feb.,
51s.; March, 54s.; April, 64s.; June, 72s.

About the middle of the century, if we may judge from the _Compleat
Cyderman_ written in 1754 by experienced hands living in Devon,
Cornwall, Herefordshire, and elsewhere, fruit-gr