landscapes at the present time, something of the
appearance of a great irregular checker-board or patchwork quilt, each
large square being divided in one direction by parallel lines.
Usually the cultivated open fields belonging to a village were divided
into three or more large tracts or fields and these were cultivated
according to some established rotation of crops. The most common of
these was the three-field system, by which in any one year all the
strips in one tract or field would be planted with wheat, rye, or some
other crop which is planted in the fall and harvested the next summer;
a second great field would be planted with oats, barley, peas, or some
such crop as is planted in the spring and harvested in the fall; the
third field would be fallow, recuperating its fertility. The next year
all the acres in the field which had lain fallow the year before might
be planted with a fall crop, the wheat field of the previous year
being planted with a spring crop, and the oats field in its turn now
lying uncultivated for a year. The third year a further exchange would
be made by which a fall crop would succeed the fallow of that year and
the spring crop of the previous year, a spring crop would succeed the
last year's fall crop and the field from which the spring crop was
taken now in its turn would enjoy a fallow year. In the fourth year
the rotation would begin over again.

[Illustration: Village with Open Fields, Udenhausen, near Coblentz,
Germany. (From a photograph taken in 1894.)]

Agriculture was extremely crude. But eight or nine bushels of wheat or
rye were expected from an acre, where now in England the average is
thirty. The plough regularly required eight draught animals, usually
oxen, in breaking up the ground, though lighter ploughs were used in
subsequent cultivation. The breed of all farm animals was small, carts
were few and cumbrous, the harvesting of grain was done with a sickle,
and the mowing of grass with a short, straight scythe. The distance of
the outlying parts of the fields from the farm buildings of the
village added its share to the laboriousness of agricultural life.

[Illustration: Modern Ploughing with Six Oxen in Sussex. (Hudson, W.
H.: _Nature in Downland_. Published by Longmans, Green & Co.)]

[Illustration: Open Fields of Hayford Bridge, Oxfordshire, 1607.
(Facsimile map published by the University of Oxford.)]

The variety of food crops raised was small. Potatoes were of cours