Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/349

 AGRICULTURAL LIFE 337 were left fallow every third year. Certain laws in cities were enacted to regulate the cultivation of the fields, the manner of ploughing and letting the ground rest, also the management of the vineyards and forests. These laws related not only to the district, but to the individual divisions of the commune as well. Besides those inhabitants of cities who also possessed farms, several monasteries, institutions, nobles, and country proprietors kept large yards in the towns, from which they could the more conveniently dispose of their productions and carry on the management of their affairs. Even the burgher always kept cows or swine, for he was considered very shiftless who ' must always buy his own meat and milk.' Even in large commercial towns there could be found cattle, swine, and sheep. In 1481 Frankfort-on-the-Main had to pass a law forbidding pigsties to be placed on the side of the house fronting the street. Sheep-breeding was con- ducted on such a scale among the Teutonic knights in Sachsenhausen that the chief master had to bind him- self by contract that not more than a thousand sheep should be confined in any one yard in the vicinity of a city, on account of the injury which such large flocks did to the foliage. Hens, geese, ducks, and pigeons were propagated in such numbers in Frankfort-on-the-Main that the muni- cipality appointed a committee called ' the pigeon knights.' At Ulm it was found necessary to forbid by law any citizen keeping more than twenty-four swine. The citizens used to send their well-fed stock out to graze by day, and bring them back at night. The poor might turn their cows loose when it did no injury. It was only in 1475 that Nuremberg passed an ordinance vol. i. z