(1) If an occupation census had been taken in the eleventh century it would probably have revealed that quite 90 percent of the people were country inhabitants who drew their livelihood from farming, herding, fishing or the forest. (2)An air photograph taken at that time would have revealed spotted villages, linked together by unpaved roads and separated by expanses of forest or swamp. There were some towns, but few of them housed more than 10000 persons. (3)A second picture, taken in the mid-fourteenth century would show that the villages had grown more numerous and also more widespread, for Europeans had pushed their frontier outward by settling new areas. (4)There would be more people on the roads, rivers and seas, carrying food or raw materials to towns which had increased in number, size and importance. But a photograph taken about 1450 would reveal that little further expansion had taken place during the preceding hundred years. Any attempt to describe the countryside during those centuries is prevented by two difficulties. In the first place, we have to examine the greater part of Europe’s 3 750 000 square miles, and not merely the Mediterranean lands. (5)In the second place, the inhabitants of that wide expanse refuse to fit into our standard pattern or to stand still.