6. _Meane erthe_, earth of ordinary character. _Mean_ is moderate, ordinary. I. R. alters it to ‘_maine_ earth,’ which was probably not intended. After _marle_, he inserts--“some neither Sand nor Clay, but like a mixture of both, yet neither, which is called a Hassell ground.”
9. I. R. has--“In Sommerset-shiere, Dawset-shiere, and Gloster-shiere.”
_Zelcester._ The old character Ʒ, which had the force of _y_ at the beginning of a word,[36] was often printed as Z, by confusion. Bishop Percy used to print such ludicrous forms as _zow_, _zour_, instead of _yow_, _your_. I conclude that _Zelcester_ = _Yelcester_, _i.e._ Ilchester. The form occurs again in sect. 27, l. 17.
16. _many other places._ J. R. says--“in some parte of Hartford-shiere, Sussex, and Cornwall.”
24. _aslope_] I. R. has _a flote_, _gyue out_, i.e. spread out, are too obtuse.
26. I. R. says--“In Cambridge-shiere, Huntington-shiere, Bedford-shiere, and for the most part of Northamton-shiere, theyr Ploughes haue but one hale. In Leister-shiere, Lankishiere, Yorkshiere, Lincolnshiere, and Notingham-shiere, they haue two; for all other Countries [_counties_] vnnamed, there is none of them but plow with some of these Ploughes before-mentioned.”
=3.= 1. The parts of a plough are enumerated in Gervase Markham’s Complete Husbandman (1614), which is quoted at length in Rogers’s Hist. of Agriculture and Prices, vol. i. p. 534. It is probable that the plough, as described by Fitzherbert, did not materially differ from that in use in 1614.
The principal parts, according to Markham, are as follows.
(1). ‘The _ploughbeam_, a large and long piece of timber, which forms an arch for the other parts of the plough.’ It is, says Fitzherbert, the long beam above, which is slightly bent. The plough-sheath, the coulter, and the plough-foot, are all mortised into it, pointing downwards.
(2). ‘The _skeath_ (i.e. _sheath_), a piece of wood two and a half feet long, eight inches broad, and two inches thick, which is mortised into the beam, and sloping forwards below it.’ Fitzherbert says it is a thin piece of dry oak, fixed both in the plough-beam and the share-beam, and is the chief ‘band,’ i.e. strengthening piece or support, of the whole plough. By ‘thin,’ he must mean that it is thin (2 inches) in proportion to its breadth (8 inches); it is necessary that it should be very strong, as it holds the implement together.