20 0 0
20 sheep 5 10 0
One sow 15 0
One servant's board and wages for one year 15 0 0
A labourer's wages for one year 20 0 0
Seed for first year, 42 acres, @ 11s. 6d. 24 3 0
Harvest labour 1 10 0
------------
L326 11 0
============

Or nearly L5 an acre.

About the same date the _Complete English Farmer_ reckoned that the
occupier of a farm of 500 acres (300 arable, 200 pasture), ought to
have a capital of L1,500, and estimated that, after paying expenses
and maintaining his family, he could put by L50 a year; 'but this
capital was much beyond what farmers in general can attain to.'[461]

The controversy of horses versus oxen for working purposes was still
raging, and Young favoured the use of oxen; for the food of horses
cost more, so did their harness and their shoeing, they are much more
liable to disease, and oxen when done with could be sold for beef. One
stout lad, moreover, could attend to 8 or 10 oxen, for all he had to
do was to put their fodder in the racks and clean the shed; no
rubbing, no currying or dressing being necessary. No beasts fattened
better than oxen that had been worked. A yoke of oxen would plough as
much as a pair of horses and carry a deeper and truer furrow, while
they were just as handy as horses in wagons, carts, rollers, &c.
William Marshall, the other great agricultural writer of the end of
the eighteenth century, agreed with Young, yet in spite of all these
advantages horses were continually supplanting oxen.

Among the improvements in agriculture was the introduction of
broad-wheeled wagons; narrow-wheeled ones were usual, and these on the
turnpikes were only allowed to be drawn by 4 horses so that the load
was small, but broad-wheeled wagons might use 8 horses. The cost of
the latter was L50 against L25 for the former.[462]

Young's opinion of the labouring man, like Tull's, was not a high one.
'I never yet knew', he says, 'one instance of any poor man's working
diligently while young and in health to escape coming to the parish
when ill or old.' This is doubtless too sweeping. There must ha