University Lectures Delivered by Members of the Faculty in the Free Public Lecture Course Volume 5 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1918 Excerpt: ...easily and invest it to great advantage. Commerce was pre-eminent. Feudalism was dead or dying and trade was booming. The Middle Ages were passing into modern times. The new plants introduced from the Americas and elsewhere were very slowly accepted by the English and other European peoples. It was hard for them to replace the food plants which had been long in use and for which the systems of garden and field culture had been adapted. It was hard to overcome the prejudices of the people who looked askance upon the new introductions. They made but slow progress in their acceptance as everyday articles of diet. "I introduced the turnip into the field," says Tull, "in King William's reign (1689-1695); but the practice did not travel beyond the hedges of my estate till after the peace of Utrecht (1713). Potatoes were even less successful, although introduced into England long before. John Forster (1664) urged their adoption as a field crop. This same conservatism as to the use of new food plants was evidenced an hundred years before in the reign of Elizabeth (1558-1603). Professor E. P. Cheyney of our university in his "A History of England" (1:31) speaking of the Queen's household writes: "Early in the Queen's reign the Secretary's diet in the court consisted on a flesh day of a first course of beef and mutton, veal, capon, conies and baked meats, and a second course of lamb or fowl, lark and tarts. On a fast day, the first course consisted of ling, salmon or herring, pike, plaice or whiting, haddock or codfish or baked meat; the second course of coney or lamprey, or roach, or smelts, finishing up with a tart. Somewhat later when the habits of expenditure had become greater, the lord steward's allowance provided at each of the tw...