In this island the winds are commonly more strong and fierce than in any other places of the main (which Cardane also espied):  and that is often seen upon the naked hills not guarded with trees to bear and keep it off.  That grievous inconvenience also enforceth our nobility, gentry, and communality to build their houses in the valleys, leaving the high grounds unto their corn and cattle, lest the cold and stormy blasts of winter should breed them greater annoyance; whereas in other regions each one desireth to set his house aloft on the hill, not only to be seen afar off, and cast forth his beams of stately and curious workmanship into every quarter of the country, but also (in hot habitations) for coldness sake of the air, sith the heat is never so vehement on the hill-top as in the valley, because the reverberation of the sun’s beams either reacheth not so far as the highest, or else becometh not so strong as when it is reflected upon the lower soil.

But to leave our buildings unto the purposed place (which notwithstanding have very much increased, I mean for curiosity and cost, in England, Wales, and Scotland, within these few years) and to return to the soil again.  Certainly it is even now in these our days grown to be much more fruitful than it hath been in times past.  The cause is for that our countrymen are grown to be more painful, skilful, and careful through recompense of gain, than heretofore they have been:  insomuch that my synchroni or time fellows can reap at this present great commodity in a little room; whereas of late years a great compass hath yielded but small profit, and this only through the idle and negligent occupation of such as daily manured and had the same in occupying.  I might set down examples of these things out of all the parts of this island—­that is to say, many of England, more out of Scotland, but most of all out of Wales; in which two last rehearsed, very other little food and livelihood was wont to be looked for (beside flesh) more than the soil of itself and the cow gave, the people in the meantime living idly, dissolutely, and by picking and stealing one from another.  All which vices are now (for the most part) relinquished, so that each nation manureth her own with triple commodity to that it was before time.

The pasture of this island is according to the nature and bounty of the soil, whereby in most places it is plentiful, very fine, batable, and such as either fatteth our cattle with speed or yieldeth great abundance of milk and cream whereof the yellowest butter and finest cheese are made.  But where the blue clay aboundeth (which hardly drinketh up the winter’s water in long season) there the grass is speary, rough, and very apt for bushes:  by which occasion it becometh nothing so profitable unto the owner as the other.  The best pasture ground of all England is in Wales, and of all the pasture in Wales that of Cardigan is the chief.  I speak of the same which is to be found in the mountains there, where