Page:Landholding in England.djvu/154

 manorial common he must leave sufficient pasture for his freehold tenants. Anciently, the right of pasture on the common attached to "ancient arable land" only: and as there had to be some rule, when the population increased, the number of cattle which a tenant could depasture on the common was the number he could feed in winter on the produce of his land in summer.

By custom, swine, donkeys, goats, and geese may feed on a common, but, strictly speaking, only oxen, horses, cows, and sheep are "communable cattle"—beasts of the plough, and animals which manure the land. They are described as "levant and couchant" ("up-rising" and "down-lying"—i.e. stalled and fed). No doubt, originally, "levant and couchant" meant animals the freehold tenant kept on his land when not upon the common; but levancy and couchancy now mean the number of cattle the land is capable of feeding, whether they are there or not. Only those beasts which helped to plough it could be turned out on the waste land; only the sharers of the common fields could claim a right on the wastes. The ploughing was done by fixed rule, sometimes by large ploughs owned in common and drawn by twelve or sixteen oxen. These oxen would be afterwards turned to feed on the common, and in the winter would pick up what they could on the common fields, which they enriched in return.

I ought to say that the manuring of land by the natural means of cow dung and sheep dung has an importance which is too little realised. For many years now a great deal of manuring has been done by other means—by the importing of "guano" and other fertilising products from other countries. But in the long run this will render barren the soils from which these manures are taken; and if the process is carried on indefinitely the fertility of whole regions will be destroyed. In the course of ages, Nature will repair this by the same means which rendered those regions fertile at first; but the human race cannot afford to wait until the consequences of its own depredations shall be remedied. The substances of which I speak are not to be found everywhere. They can be exhausted.

The absolute necessity for pasturage is shown in the arrangements for the town-lands. In each vill, or township, there were usually three large open fields; in a large