Cider was then mostly made in the west, as in Devonshire and Cornwall, and perry in Worcestershire and Gloucestershire; but he leaves out Herefordshire, where it was certainly made at this time.[310]

A curious help to fattening beasts, says Markham, is a lean horse or two kept with them, for the beasts delight to feed with them.  Fattening cattle were to have first bite at the pastures, then draught cattle, and then sheep; after Midsummer, when there is an extraordinary sweetness in the grass, suffer the cattle to eat the grass closer till Lammas (August 1).  Though some do not hold with him, he thinks reading and writing not unprofitable to a husbandman, but not much material ‘to his bailiff’; for there is more trust in an honest score chalked on a trencher than ‘in a commen writen scrowle’.  Landowners derived a good income from their woods and coppices.  An acre of underwood of twenty-one years’ growth, was at this time worth from L20 to L30; of twelve years’ growth, L5 to L6; but on many of the best lands it was only cut every thirty years.[311]

In 1742-3 oak timber was worth from 15d. to 18d. per cubic foot and ash about 10d.  During the Napoleonic war oak sold for 4s. 6d. a foot.

In Blyth’s Improver Improved we have one of the first accounts of covered drains.  The draining trench was to be made deep enough to go the bottom of the ‘cold spewing moist water’ that feeds the flags and the rushes; as for the width ‘use thine own liberty’ but be sure make it as straight as possible.  The bottom was to be filled in with faggots or stones to a depth of 15 inches, a method in some parts retained till comparatively modern times, with the top turf laid upon them grass downward, and the drain filled in with the earth dug out of it.

A country gentleman at this date could keep up a good establishment on an income which to-day would compel him to live economically in a cottage.  From the accounts of Mr. Master, a landowner near Chiselhurst, it appears that a man with an income of L300 or L400 a year could live in some luxury, keep a stud of horses, and a considerable number of servants.[312] Some of them had no scruples about adding to their incomes by turning corn-dealers, even selling such small quantities as pecks of peas, bushels of rye, and half pecks of oatmeal.  From the accounts of one of them, Henry Best,[313] of Elmswell, we learn many valuable details concerning farming in Yorkshire about 1641.  It was the custom to put the ram to the ewes about October 18, but Best did so about Michaelmas, and generally used one ram to 30 or 40 ewes, and he considered it necessary that the ewes should be two-shear.  ‘Good handsome ewes’, he says, could have been bought at Kilham fair for 3s. 6d. each, a price far below the average of the time.  As for wages, mowers of grass had 10d. a day, and found their own food and their scythes, which cost them about 2s. 3d. each.  Haymakers got 4d. a day, and had to ‘meat