The oxen likewise and the young asses... — It is, perhaps, hardly necessary to remind the reader that the verb “ear” means “plough.”
Clean provender. — Literally, salted. The epithet describes what in modern phrase would be the favourite “mash” of the highest class of cattle-feeding, corn mixed with salt or alkaline herbs; and this was to be made, not, as commonly, of inferior barley and chopped straw, but of the finest winnowed grain. That this should be given not to oxen and horses only, but to the lowlier asses, made up the ne plus ultra of plenty.