60 PLINY'S NATURAL H1STOET. [Book XVIII. 



strong and powerful, beans. Vetches should be grown in a 

 soil as free from water and weeds as possible ; while wheat 

 and winter wheat are best adapted to an open, elevated loca- 

 lity, fully exposed to the warmth of the sun. The lentil 

 thrives best in a meagre, red earth, free from weeds. Barley is 

 equally suited for fallow land and for a soil that is not intended 

 to be fallow, and three-month wheat, for a soil upon which a 

 crop of ordinary wheat would never ripen, but strong enough 

 to bear." 



The following, too, is sound advice : 44 Those plants should 

 be sown in a thin soil which do not stand in need of much 

 nutriment, the cytisus, for instance, and such of the leguminous 

 plants, with the exception of the chick-pea, as are taken up 

 by the roots and not cut. From this mode of gathering them 

 " legere" the legumina derive their name. "Where it is a 

 rich earth, those plants should be grown which require a 

 greater proportion of nutriment, coleworts for instance, wheat, 

 winter-wheat, and flax. The result, then, will be, that a 

 light soil will be given to barley the root of that grain stand- 

 ing in need of less nutriment while a more dense, though 

 easily- worked soil, will be assigned to wheat. In humid loca- 

 lities spelt should be sown in preference to wheat ; but where 

 the soil is of moderate temperature, either wheat or barley 

 may be grown. Declivities produce a stronger growth of 

 wheat, but in smaller quantities. Spelt and winter-wheat 

 adopt a moist, cretaceous soil in preference to any other. 



(18.) The only occasion on which there ever was a prodigy 

 connected with grain, at least that I am aware of, was in the 

 consulship of P. -^Elius and Cneius Cornelius, the year 45 in 

 which Hannibal was vanquished : on that occasion, we find 

 it stated, corn was seen growing upon trees. 45 



CHAP. 47. THE DIFFERENT SYSTEMS OF CULTIVATION EMPLOYED 

 BY VARIOUS NATIONS. 



As we have now spoken at sufficient length of the several 

 varieties of grain and soil, we shall proceed to treat of the 

 methods adopted in tilling the ground, taking care, in the very 



44 From Varro; DeRe Rust. i. 23. 



45 A.TT.C. 553. 



46 There is nothing wonderful in a few grains of corn germinating in 

 the cleft of a tree. 



