"As Britain's first farmers herded their cattle across the lonely hills they made a momentous discovery. Working with stone axes to clear the ancient forest they found that in its place grew grass. And on the rich forest soils, watered by the warm rains of the Atlantic, that grass grew greener and thicker than almost anywhere in the Northern Hemisphere." "For more than five thousand years Britain's grasslands have brought wealth and prosperity. They built a powerful overseas trade before the mass of the population had even emerged from serfdom. They fed the fast-growing towns of Tudor Britain, and were the foundation of modern capitalism. There could have been no industrial revolution without an earlier revolution in the countryside."--BOOK JACKET.