Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 73.djvu/408

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404
POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY


It is a Four Course of (1) Corn, (2) Oats, (3) Wheat, (4) Hay—Timothy and Clover. First year. Corn, grown for silage. About 10 tons of silage is cut per acre. Corn permits of intertillage and cleaning the land of weeds.

tribe, in India. The inhabitants of Britain were Iberians, a non Aryan race and related to some of the hill tribes of India. The hills were peopled first because they were free from trees, and the soil was easy to till, while the valleys were swampy, marshy and often covered with timber, which they had no means of removing except by fire. The forests were held to be more or less sacred, even at so late a period as the Roman invasion. The Druid priesthood is held to be of non Aryan origin, but surviving a conquest, was accepted by the Celts. Two Aryan races, the Celts and the Saxons, invaded Britain, one before and one after the time of the Romans and both learned their agriculture from the race they overcame. At this time the community generally owned the land, and its management was vested in officials elected for the purpose. The Romans introduced individual ownership, and this was never uprooted. It grew gradually under the Saxons and more quickly under the Normans, but made its most rapid progress during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, when wool was the valuable product and land was wanted for grazing sheep. During this time the customary method was to cultivate a piece of land for a few years and then, leaving it to go back to grass, break up another piece, and cultivate it until it became unprofitable. It is interesting to note that wherever population is scanty this method is adopted, whether in the ages of antiquity in Europe or during the nineteenth century in America. In some parts of the United Kingdom, modifications of this system existed at a comparatively recent date. The