[E284] "Count best the best cheape": "For it doth the buyer more credit and service."--Ray. We still say "Cheap and nasty;" and in the Towneley Mysteries, p. 102, there is the same sentiment:
"Men say lyght chepe letherly for yeeldys,"
equivalent to our English proverb: "Light cheap, litter yield."
[E285] It is always advisable to pay carpenters their fair wages, without any allowance of chips, which is a great temptation for them to waste timber.--M. In hewing timber, if the workman hews square, the seller of the timber loses all the gain of the _Wane edges_, which gain in short is a cheat, although a very customary one.--T.R.
[E286] "Within these fortie yeeres we shall haue little great timber growing aboue fortie yeeres old; for it is commonlie seene that those yong _staddles_ which we leaue standing at one and twentie yeeres fall, are vsuallie at the next sale cut downe without any danger of the statute, and serue for fire bote, if it please the owner to burne them."--Harrison, Part I. p. 345. "There is a Statute made, 35 Henry the 8, and the 1 Eliz. for the presentation of timber trees, Oake, Ash, Elme, Aspe, and Beech: and that 12 storers and _standils_ should bee left standing at euery fall, vpon an acre."--Norden's Surveyor's Dialogue, 1607, p. 213. On the decrease in woods, etc., in England, see Harrison's Description of England (New Shakspere Soc. edit. F. J. Furnivall, Part I. p. 344) and Norden's Surveyor's Dialogue, 1607, p. 214, in the latter of which one cause is stated to be the large number of hammers and furnaces for the manufacture of iron, and the quantity of charcoal used in the glass-houses; there being, as he says: "now or lately in Sussex, neere 140 hammers and furnaces for iron, and in it, and Surry adjoyning 3,400 glasse houses: the hammers and furnaces spend, each of them, in every 24 houres 2, 3 or foure loades of charrcoale."--p. 215. "There is a Law in Spaine, that he that cuts down _one Tree_, shall plant _three_ for it."--A Treatise of Fruit Trees, R. A. Austin, Oxford, 1657, p. 128.
[E287] "Leaue oxen abrode," etc. The Author of Tusser Redivivus is supported in his reading of this line by the edition of 1597, which has "leaue _not_ oxe abrode." The sense, however, may possibly be, "keep oxen at a distance, for fear of injuring the young shoots." "_Springe_ or ympe that commeth out of the rote."--Huloet's Abcedarium, 1552. "Keep from biting, treading underfoot, or damage of beasts ... whereby mischief may be done to the _Springs_, during the time limited by the statute for such kind of wood."--Brumby Lease, 1716, in Peacock's Glossary, E. Dial. Soc.