140 AGRICULTURE. 



tions. We think that some recognition of the labours of 

 a predecessor, who probably very much lightened his own 

 task, would have been no more than a graceful tribute. 

 Mr. Hoskyns's mediaeval and modern dissertations are 

 foreign from our present purpose. He has a long passage 

 on the application of steam to the cultivation of the soil, 

 and expresses a strong opinion that the hitherto-failures 

 have resulted from a misdirection of the power. A steam- 

 engine, he says, should dig, not plough. We are told that 

 digging is a very satisfactory, ploughing a very unsatisfac- 

 tory, operation. We read on the tiptoe of expectation, 

 hoping to learn how a steam-engine shall be made to dig ; 

 but Mr. Hoskyns cruelly passes on to determine how much 

 coal would lift a man from the valley of Chamouny to the 

 top of Mont Blanc. We have been obliged to qualify our 

 praise of Mr. Hoskyns's book, which is, however, by no 

 means uninteresting ; indeed, we rather think it is suited 

 to a considerable class of non-agricultural readers. 



Before we return to our more homely instructor, who 

 occupies himself almost wholly with Roman husbandry, 

 we must despatch, in a few sentences, the little information 

 which we have been able to gather on Grecian and Cartha- 

 ginian agriculture. Though Attica was arid, Laconia 

 swampy, Megara rocky, and Corinth dependent on impor- 

 tation for a supply of food, the art of the husbandman was 

 not without its literature. Pliny laments over forty Greek 

 treatises on agriculture, which were lost in his day ; and 

 Columella reckons them at fifty. The pursuit may not 

 have been held in high esteem, but its operations were 

 certainly familiar to the educated class. Hesiod was 

 strictly an agricultural writer ; and the allusions to farm- 

 ing operations in Homer and Theocritus are definite, and 

 entirely practical. Euboeus, OV@UTW . op^a/xo? onfyuv, is no 

 fanciful swine-herd ; and, however ideal the ditties of Lyci- 

 das and Thyrsis may be, their shepherding is quite real. 

 In the passage relating to the capture of Dolon, Hectqr's 

 spy, Pope, following Madame Dacier, has made a sad hash 



