Page:History of the German people at the close of the Middle Ages vol1.djvu/351

AGRICULTURAL LIFE 339 •ence were low ; those for luxuries, on the contrary, were very high. The flax and hemp industry was considerable in many places ; in Ulm, for instance, at the close of the fifteenth century, as many as sixty thousand pieces of linen or cotton were bleached yearly. It was asserted that Germany produced more linen than all the rest of the world. 1 Near the larger cities garden culture developed in proportion to the general prosperity. There was so much saffron grown in the gardens around Altenburg in the year 1500 that it brought in several thousand thalers to the town. At and around Erfurt pastel, 2 saffron, aniseed, coriander, and vegetables were largely cultivated. The cultivation was so remunerative that in good years the profits from it amounted in the neighbourhood of Erfurt to more than one hundred thalers. 3 The inhabitants of Erfurt had a high reputation as skilled gardeners. Next to Erfurt, Mentz, Wurzburg, and Bamberg were distinguished for horticulture. Erankfort-on-the-Main, Nuremberg and Augsburg were remarkable for their flower gardens, where the marsh- mallow, the primrose, the hyacinths, and the auriculas were to be seen in every variety of shade and colour. The author of the ' Book of Fruits, Trees and Boots,' must remember that the number of villages was greater, so many were destroyed during the wars of the peasants and the Thirty Years' War. See Landau, Waste OrtscJiaften, pp. 382, 386, 390. 1 German linen was imported into almost every country of Europe. The greater number of the inhabitants of Silesia were weavers or spinners. See Hildebrand's Jahrbuch fur Nationalokonomie, VII. ii. 215-230. 2 Pastel was then used instead of indigo. 3 See Langethal, iii. 121-122. Nuremberg was also famous for its nursery gardens. (Celtes, De Orig. Norimb. p. 2.) In the year 1505 Maximilian sent gardeners to take lessons in the nurseries of Nuremberg. z 2