In another lease, for the year 1353, the farmer takes the arable land and cedes half its produce; but for the house, the garden, and as much meadow-land as a man would take two days to mow, he pays a yearly rental in money of forty sols, and a quit-rent of ten brace of capons. The same leases give us particulars as to the wages of farm-servants in the south of France. In 1358 a cowherd received nine livres a year and a pair of shoes. Now, historians are pretty generally agreed that the fourteenth-century livre represents about a hundred francs of our money. At this valuation, our Gascon neatherd received the equivalent of nine hundred francs in modern currency: that is to say, £36. A swineherd was paid four livres a year and his shoes; a shepherd, six livres a year (£24) and his shoes; an old woman-servant, two livres a year (about £8), her shoes and a warm petticoat; for in those days, as in these, the servants on a Gascon farm were housed and fed at the expense of the farmer. Thus the rate of rustic wages was sensibly higher than it is to-day, when twenty pounds a year are considered excellent wages for a labourer on a farm. It is true that a modern shepherd or a head-cowboy has certain perquisites which raise his wage to very nearly the amount paid in the fourteenth century. But we cannot talk of progress. There were several ways of hiring stock. On most farms the cattle were supplied by the landlord, the tenant being bound, at the expiry of his lease, to restore the flock and herds in the same condition as he found them. They were also let out on hire. Rochelle, the farmer of Bonis, hires from his landlord a pair of oxen worth twelve livres; for the use of them he pays every year a rent of three septiers of wheat (about 650 litres), but for every septier of wheat he is accounted to have acquired a right to one-twelfth part of the cattle, so that at the end of four years the team was to become the property of Rochelle. This system (not unlike the three years’ hire system, by which many people of the modern middle class acquire their more expensive furniture) was very widely spread throughout the southern provinces. The ploughs, carts, reaping-hooks, rakes, flails, scythes, spades, shovels, winepresses, benches, taps, and barrels, etc., necessary on every estate, were let with the land upon a repairing lease.