§ 7. IMPROVEMENTS OF CATTLE, AND IN THE PRODUCTIVENESS OF LAND. STATISTICS—The extended cultivation of winter roots, clover, and other grasses, naturally made it far easier for the farmer to feed his animals in the winter; and the improvement in stock followed closely upon the improvement in fodder. The abundance of stock, too, had again a beneficial result in the increased qualities of manure produced, and the utilization of this fertilizer was scientifically developed. The useful, though costly, process of marling was again revived, and was advocated by Arthur Young; soils were also treated with clay, chalk, or lime. So great was the improvement thus made, that the productiveness of land in the eighteenth century rose to four times that of the thirteenth century, when five bushels or eight bushels of corn per acre was the average. Stock, also, was similarly improved; an eighteenth century fatted ox often weighed 1200 lbs., while hitherto, from the fourteenth to the end of the seventeenth century, the weight had not been usually much above 400 lbs. The weight of the fleece of sheep had also increased quite four times. Population being even then small, a considerable quantity of corn was exported, the British farmer being also protected from foreign competition by the corn laws (made in Charles II.’s reign, 1661 and 1664), forbidding importation of corn, except when it rose to famine prices. Young estimated the acreage of the country at 32,000,000 acres (King put it {115} at 22,000,000 in the seventeenth century); its value (at thirty-three and one-half years’ purchase) was, says Young, £536,000,000. The value of stock he places at nearly £110,000,000, and estimates the wheat and rye crop at over 9,000,000 quarters per annum, barley at 11,500,000 quarters, and oats at 10,250,000 quarters. The rent of land had risen to nearly ten shillings an acre.