From October to May are calves to be reared, because then they be more hardly bred and become the stronger cattle. Feed brawns, bacons, lards, and porkets on mast if there is any, if not on corn. 'In these months cleanse poundes or pools, this season being the driest;' an extraordinary assertion, unless the climate has changed, seeing that according to the monthly averages from 1841-1906, taken at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, October is the wettest month in the year.[285] November and December. Sort all kinds of sheep until Lady Day, viz. wethers by themselves, and weaning lambs by themselves; and do not put rams to the ewes before S. Lukestide, October 18, for those lambs fall about March 25, and if they fall before then the scarcity of grass and the cold will so nip and chill them that they will die or be weaklings. It is good at this time to take draught cattle and horses from grass into the house before any great storms begin. Thrash corn now after it hath had a good sweat in the mow, and so dried again, and give the straw to the draught oxen and cattle at the standaxe or at the barn doors for sparing of hay, advice which Tusser also gives: 'Serve rie straw out first, then wheat straw and peas, Then ote straw and barley, then hay if ye please.' FOOTNOTES: [252] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1896, pp. 77 sq., and Gerard, _Herbal_ (ed. 1633), p. 232. [253] About 1684, John Worlidge wrote to Houghton that sheep fatted on clover were not such delicate meat as the heath croppers, and that sheep fatten very well on turnips. Houghton, _Collection for Improvement of Husbandry_, iv. 142. This is said to be the first notice of turnips being given to sheep. [254] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1896, p. 77. One of the proofs of the rarity of vegetables among the poorer classes of England, especially in the Middle Ages, is the fact that rents paid in kind never included them. [255] _R.A.S.E. Journal_, 1892, p. 19. [256] Chapple, _Review of Risdon's Survey of Devon_ (1785), p. 17 n. _Victoria County History: Devonshire, Agriculture_. [257] Blyth was a great advocate of enclosure. 'Live the commoners do indeed', he says, 'very many in a mean, low condition, with hunger and ease. Better do these in Bridewell. What they get they spend. And can they make even at the year's rent?' [258] Rymer, _Foedera_ (Orig. ed.), xix. 512. [259] _Manydown Manor Rolls_, Hampshire Record Society, p. 172. [260] Thorold Rogers, _Work and Wages_, p. 459. [261] Houghton, _Collections, &c._, ii. 448. [262] Thorold Rogers, _History of Agriculture and Prices_, v. p. vii. Cf. p. 139 infra. [263] Cullum, _Hawsted_, pp. 196 et seq. In the Hawsted leases, at the end of the sixteenth and beginning of the seventeenth centuries, it is noteworthy that there were, at a time of repeated complaints against laying down land to pasture, clauses against breaking up pasture land. [264] In 1677 there were complaints of a fall in rents.