26 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



is a matter for argument. Etymology shows tteX- and col- to 

 be cognate stems. aiTroAos, /SovkoXos, jjoIus, callis, currere, 

 colore, carry with them the notion, active or passive variously, 

 of movement. rptVoX- is clearly indicative of movement thrice 

 repeated, whether continuous or in interrupted succession. 



"Thrice ploughed" is in such case clearly admissible, 

 although I do not recall an illustrative parallel instance of 

 TTtA- being used of ploughing. 



In this context Seebohin (p. 11) furnishes a suggestion : he 

 is writing about the Manor of Hitchin. Ail the customs of the 

 Manor are of great antiquity ; the boundaries are marked 

 according to a form used two thousand years ago, during the 

 Eoman occupation, and uninterruptedly from that time to the 

 present period. 



The common fields of the Manor are six ; and it is recorded 

 that these common fields have immemorially been, and ought 

 to be, kept and cultivated in three shifts by rotation — in tilth- 

 grain, in etch-grain, and in falloio. 



This three -shift system is found established in China, 

 where it has prevailed from time immemorial. It has pre- 

 vailed in England up to the time of our grandfathers. Eng- 

 land contains (say) ten thousand parishes ; and up to 1844 a 

 very large number of Enclosure Acts — perhaps about four 

 thousand — have been passed. The Enclosure Acts, as is well 

 known, dealt with common land, and put an end to both the 

 tenure and the system of common cultivation. The custom 

 was therefore very ancient, and lias been very extensive. 



Now, in the Scutum the rich nature of the soil bars the 

 need of increased ploughing. Sour and stiff soils require the 

 plough to be run up and down them to admit air and sunlight, 

 that the land may be sweetened : a good soil does not need 

 such physic. It is dubious, also, whether triple ploughing has 

 a very high antiquity, or whether such ploughs as Colonel 

 Leake conjectures to have been used in the Homeric period 

 are fit for the deep ploughing suggested by rpiiroXov and its 

 context. It suggests itself to me that rpLiroXov is the three- 

 shift system, indicated by an epitheton constans, and grouped 

 with the epithets descriptive of the soil itself. If this sugges- 

 tion be admissible, the famous Ploughing of the Fallow is a 

 picture which may have been true of the Common Field of 

 Hitchin a century ago. 



Note, in continuation of the main argument, a considera- 

 tion based upon II. xxii. 489 : 



uXkoL yap ot u.TrovpTQ(Tov(Tiv dpovpas — 



On which Paley (in loco) makes the note: " aTruvpyja-ovcnv, 

 ' will take away,' a future from diravpaw, or rather from an 

 aorist dTruvpelv regarded as a present. . . The future does 

 not occur again in Homer." 



