[E280] "Without cost," that is, on which no expense has been incurred.
[E281] Watering is necessary in dry seasons for what is fresh set or planted, but not for what is newly sown.
[E282] It is to be lamented, both on account of the health and the finances of the poor, that they are so much attached, either to solid food, or to watery infusions of tea. Herbs, pulse and roots might often supersede more expensive articles of diet. Spoonmeat, in this part of the island at least, is in no high request at this period, though it appears to have been indispensable formerly.—M.
[E283] "There remaineth yet a third kinde of meats, which is neither fish nor flesh, commonly called white meats, as egges, milk, butter, cheese, which notwithstanding proceede and come of flesh, as egges from the henne, and milk from the cowe. Yet because they are not plainely flesh, they are permitted to be eaten upon the fish daies."—Cogan's Haven of Health, ed. 1612, p. 149.
"But how soeuer this case standeth, white meats, as milke, butter and cheese, which were neuer so deere as in my time, and woont to be accounted of as one of the chiefe staies throughout the Iland, are now reputed as foods appertinent onelie to the inferiour sort, whilest such as are more wealthie, doo feed vpon the flesh of all kinds of cattell accustomed to be eaten, all sorts of fish taken vpon our coasts and in our fresh rivers, and such diuersitie of wild and tame foules as are either bred in our Iland or brought ouer vnto vs from other countries of the maine."—Harrison, Descript. of England, ed. Furnivall, Part I. p. 144. White meats in Lincoln now mean the flesh of lamb, veal, rabbits, chickens, pheasants, etc.
[E284] "Count best the best cheape": "For it doth the buyer more credit and service."—Ray. We still say "Cheap and nasty;" and in the Towneley Mysteries, p. 102, there is the same sentiment:
"Men say lyght chepe
letherly for yeeldys,"
equivalent to our English proverb: "Light cheap, litter yield."
[E285] It is always advisable to pay carpenters their fair wages, without any allowance of chips, which is a great temptation for them to waste timber.—M. In hewing timber, if the workman hews square, the seller of the timber loses all the gain of the Wane edges, which gain in short is a cheat, although a very customary one.—T.R.
[E286] "Within these fortie yeeres we shall haue little great timber growing aboue fortie yeeres old; for it is commonlie seene that those yong staddles which we leaue standing at one and twentie yeeres fall, are vsuallie at the next sale cut downe without any danger of the statute, and serue for fire bote, if it please the owner to burne them."—Harrison, Part I. p. 345. "There is a Statute made, 35 Henry the 8, and the 1 Eliz. for the presentation of timber trees, Oake, Ash, Elme, Aspe, and Beech: and that 12 storers and standils should bee left standing at euery fall, vpon an acre."—Norden's Surveyor's Dialogue, 1607, p. 213. On the decrease in woods, etc., in England, see Harrison's Description of England (New Shakspere Soc. edit. F. J. Furnivall, Part I. p. 344) and Norden's Surveyor's Dialogue, 1607, p. 214, in the latter of which one cause is stated to be the large number of hammers and furnaces for the manufacture of iron, and the quantity of charcoal used in the glass-houses; there being, as he says: "now or lately in Sussex, neere 140 hammers and furnaces for iron, and in it, and Surry adjoyning 3,400 glasse houses: the hammers and furnaces spend, each of them, in every 24 houres 2, 3 or foure loades of charrcoale."—p. 215. "There is a Law in Spaine, that he that cuts down one Tree, shall plant three for it."—A Treatise of Fruit Trees, R. A. Austin, Oxford, 1657, p. 128.