nd servitude
of being ever tilled," is "faint and feeble-hearted," and is being
laid to grass, for pasture is the only use for which it is suited. The
cause of the conversion of arable fields to pasture is the same as
that which caused the same change on other lands at an earlier
date--so low a level of productivity that the land was not worth
cultivating. Lands whose fertility had been restored were put under
cultivation and plowed until they were again in need of rest.

Thus the final result was about the same whether an enclosing landlord
cut across the gradual process of readjustment of land-holding among
the tenants, and converted the whole into pasture, or whether the
process was allowed to go on until none but large holders remained in
the village. In both cases the tendency was towards a system of
husbandry in which the fertility of the soil was maintained by
periodically withdrawing portions of it from cultivation and laying
it to grass. In the one case, cultivation was completely suspended for
a number of years, but was gradually reintroduced as it became evident
that the land had recovered its strength while used as pasture. In the
other, the grazing of sheep and cattle was introduced as a
by-industry, for the sake of utilizing the land which had been set
aside to recover its strength, while the better land was kept under
the plow. Whether enclosures were made for better agriculture, then,
as Mr. Leadam contends, or for pasture, as is argued by Professor
Gay,[142] the arable enclosures were used as pasture for a part of the
time and the enclosed pastures came later to be used for tillage part
of the time, and the two things amount to the same thing in the end.

This end, however, had still not been reached in a great number of
open-field villages by the beginning of the eighteenth century, and we
should expect to find that the history of the land in this century was
but a repetition of what had gone before, in so far as the fields
which had not hitherto been enclosed are concerned.

But, during the seventeenth century, an agricultural revolution was
taking place. Experiments were being made with new forage crops. For
one thing, it was found that turnips could be grown in the fields and
that they made excellent winter forage; and grass seeding was
introduced. The grasses and clovers which were brought from Holland
not only made excellent hay, but improved the soil rapidly. The
possibility of increasing the