Of Villages To whatever cultivation land is put, whether pasture, corn, vines, etc. the farmers or labourers who carry on the work must live near at hand; otherwise the time taken in going to their fields and returning to their houses would take up too much of the day. Hence the necessity for villages established in all the country and cultivated land, where there must also be enough farriers and wheelwrights for the instruments, ploughs, and carts which are needed; especially when the village is at a distance from the towns. The size of a village is naturally proportioned in number of inhabitants to what the land dependent on it requires for daily work, and to the artisans who find enough employment there in the service of the farmers and labourers: but these artisans are not quite so necessary in the neighbourhood of towns to which the labourers can resort without much loss of time.
If one or more of the owners of the land dependent on the village reside there the number of inhabitants will be greater in proportion to the domestic servants and artisans drawn thither, and the inns which will be established there for the convenience of the domestic servants and workmen who are maintained by the landlords.
If the lands are only proper for maintaining sheep, as in the sandy districts and moorlands, the villages will be fewer and smaller since only a few shepherds are required on the land.
If the lands only produce woods in sandy soils where there is no grass for beasts, and if they are distant from towns and rivers which makes the timber useless for consumption as one sees in many cases in Germany, there will be only so many houses and villages as are needed to gather acorns and feed pigs in season: but if the lands are altogether barren there will be neither villages nor inhabitants.
