th 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 commonly sixteen or twenty
bushels, an acre of barley six-and-thirty bushels, of oats and such
like four or five quarters, which proportion is notwithstanding oft
abated toward the north, as it is oftentimes surmounted in the south.
Of mixed corn, as peas and beans, sown together, tares and oats
(which they call bulmong), rye and wheat (named miscelin), here is no
place to speak, yet their yield is nevertheless much after this
proportion, as I have often marked. And yet is not this our great
foison comparable to that of hotter countries of the main. But, of
all that I ever read, the increase which Eldred Danus writeth of in
his _De imperie Judaeorum in Aethiopia_ surmounteth, where he saith
that in the field near to the Sabbatike river, called in old time
Gosan, the ground is so fertile that every grain of barley growing
doth yield an hundred kernels at the least unto the owner.

Of late years also we have found and taken up a great trade in
planting of hops, whereof our moory hitherto and unprofitable grounds
do yield such plenty and increase that there are few farmers or
occupiers in the country which have not gardens and hops growing of
their own, and those far better than do come from Flanders unto us.
Certes the corruptions used by the Flemings, and forgery daily
practised in this kind of ware, gave us occasion to plant them