Gervase Markham, who lived at the commencement of the 17th century, himself a practical husbandman, wrote a work with the object of enlarging the knowledge of the agriculturists of his time, and of "recording the most true and infallible experience of the best husbandmen in the land." He entertained the opinion that to teach farmers reading and writing was a superfluous endeavor. He thought that, "as touching the master of the family himself, learning could be no burthen," but "if we speake as touching some espeeiall servants in husbandrie, as the bayliffe, the under farmer, or any other ordinary accountant, it is not much materiall whether they be acquainted therewith or no, for there is more trust in an honest score chaulkt on a trencher, than in a cunning written scrowle. And there is more benefit in simple and single numeration in chaulke, than in double multiplication, though in never bo faire an hand written!" There are some people even in the present day, it is to be feared, who have faith in the sufficiency of chalk; but what will they say of the following mode of ascertaining the probable state of the corn-market, which belongs to the same order of intelligence, and was put forth by Markham as a well-founded piece of instruction: "If you would know whether corne shall be cheape or deere, take twelve principal graynes of Wheate out of the strengthe of the eare, upon the 1st day of Januarie, and when the harth of your chimney is most hot, sweepe it clene; then make a stranger lay one of those graynes on the harth, then mark it well, and if it leape a little, corne shall be reasonably cheape, but if it leape much, then corne shall be exceeding cheape, but if it lie still and move not, then the price of corne shall stand, and continue still for that moneth; and thus you shall use your twelve graynes the first day of every moneth one after another, that is to say, every moneth one graine, and you shall know the rising and falling of corne. in eyery moneth, all the yeare following." - Philip's Progress of Agriculture.