f any virtue or goodness.

Our meadows are either bottoms (whereof we have great store, and those
very large, because our soil is hilly) or else such as we call land meads,
and borrowed from the best and fattest pasturages. The first of them are
yearly and often overflown by the rising of such streams as pass through
the same, or violent falls of land-waters, that descend from the hills
about them. The other are seldom or never overflown, and that is the cause
wherefore their grass is shorter than that of the bottoms, and yet is it
far more fine, wholesome, and batable, sith the hay of our low meadows is
not only full of sandy cinder, which breedeth sundry diseases in our
cattle, but also more rowty, foggy, and full of flags, and therefore not
so profitable for store and forrage as the higher meads be. The difference
furthermore in their commodities is great; for, whereas in our land
meadows we have not often above one good load of hay, or peradventure a
little more in an acre of ground (I use the word _carrucata_, or
_carruca_, which is a wain load, and, as I remember, used by Pliny, lib.
33, cap. 2), in low meadows we have sometimes three, but commonly two or
upwards, as experience hath oft confirmed.

Of such as are twice mowed I speak not, sith their later math is not so
wholesome for cattle as the first; although in the mouth more pleasant for
the time: for thereby they become oftentimes to be rotten, or to increase
so fast in blood, that the garget and other diseases do consume many of
them before the owners can seek out any remedy, by phlebotomy or
otherwise. Some superstitious fools suppose that they which die of the
garget are ridden with the nightmare, and therefore they hang up stones
which naturally have holes in them, and must be found unlooked for; as if
such a stone were an apt cockshot for the devil to run through and solace
himself withal, while the cattle go scot-free and are not molested by him!
But if I should set down but half the toys that superstition hath brought
into our husbandmen's heads in this and other behalf, it would ask a
greater volume than is convenient for such a purpose, wherefore it shall
suffice to have said thus much of these things.

The yield of our corn-ground is also much after this rate following.
Throughout the land (if you please to make an estimate thereof by the
acre) in mean and indifferent years, wherein each acre of rye or wheat,
well tilled and dressed, will yield co