To these burdens, which were common to all, were added numerous local restrictions, of which only some of the more widely diffused will be here mentioned. The number of cattle that villeins were permitted to keep was frequently prescribed to them according to the extent of their holdings. A portion of the pasture land upon his holding before seed time, and of the produce after the harvest, belonged to the landowner. This right, to which pretensions had been already made in the middle ages, became a severe plague in the last century, when the noblemen began increasing their flocks of sheep. For they made demands on the peasants' fields generally, when fodder for cattle was failing: how, then, could the peasants maintain their own animals? As early as 1617 it was held as a maxim in Silesia, that peasants must not keep sheep unless they possessed an old authorisation for it. The keeping of goats was altogether forbidden in many places. This old prohibition is one of the reasons why the poor in wide districts of Eastern Germany are deprived of these useful animals. Elector August of Saxony in 1560 denounced in his ordinances the pigeons of the peasants, and since that time they have been prohibited in other provincial ordinances. Other tyrannies were devised by the love of game. Shortly after the war it was held to be the duty of peasants to offer everything saleable, in the first instance, to the lord of the manor,--dung, wool, honey, and even eggs and poultry: if the authorities would not take his goods, he was bound to expose them for a fixed period in the nearest town; it was only then that the sale became free. But it was truly monstrous, when the authorities compelled their subjects to buy goods from the manorial property which they did not need. These barbarisms were quite common, at least in the East of Germany, after 1650, especially in Moravia, Bohemia, and Silesia. When the great proprietors drew their ponds and could not sell the fish, the villeins were obliged to take them, in proportion to their means, at a fixed rate. The same was the case with butter, cheese, corn, and cattle. This was the cause of so many of the country people in Bohemia becoming small traders, as they had to convey these goods into neighbouring countries, often to their own great loss.[27] In vain did the magistrates in Silesia in 1716 endeavour to check this abuse.[28]