of different qualities and then to give a share in each of
these plots to each member of the community. They never dreamed of
being able to bring the poor plots up to a high level of productivity
by the use of plentiful manuring, etc., but had to accept the
differences in quality as they found them. The inconvenience and
confusion of the common-field system were endured because, under the
circumstances, it was the only possible system.

Very few cattle were kept. No more were kept because there was no way
of keeping them. In the fields wheat, rye, oats, barley and beans were
raised, but no hay and no turnips. Field grasses and clover which
could be introduced in the course of field crops were unknown. What
hay they had came entirely from the permanent meadows, the low-lying
land bordering the banks of streams. "Meadow grass," writes Dr.
Simkhovitch, "could grow only in very definite places on low and moist
land that followed as a rule the course of a stream. This gave the
meadow a monopolistic value, which it lost after the introduction of
grass and clover in the rotation of crops."[42] The number of cattle
and sheep kept by the community was limited by the amount of forage
available for winter feeding. Often no limitation upon the number
pastured in summer in the common pastures was necessary other than
that no man should exceed the number which he was able to keep during
the winter. The meadow hay was supplemented by such poor fodder as
straw and the loppings of trees, and the cattle were got through the
winter with the smallest amount of forage which would keep them alive,
but even with this economy it was impossible to keep a sufficient
number.

The amount of stall manure produced in the winter was of course small,
on account of the scant feed, and even the more plentiful manure of
the summer months was the property of the lord, so that the villain
holdings received practically no dung. The villains were required to
send their cattle and sheep at night to a fold which was moved at
frequent intervals over the demesne land, and their own land received
ordinarily no dressing of manure excepting the scant amount produced
when the village flocks pastured on the fallow fields.

The supply of manure, insufficient in any case to maintain the
fertility of the arable land, was diminishing rather than increasing.
As Dr. Russell suggested in the passage referred to above, the
continuous use of pastures and meadows causes a