] 44 AGRICULTURE. 



the passage, but as each appears to us to fail in giving 

 the precise meaning, we have ventured on a translation of 

 our own : 



" The young oxen which we buy should be square in 

 their form, large limbed, with strong, lofty, and dark- 

 coloured horns, broad and curly fronts, rough ears, black 

 eyes and lips, prominent and expanded nostrils, long and 

 brawny neck, ample dewlaps pendant nearly to the knees, 

 a wide chest and large shoulders, roomy-bellied, with well- 

 bowed ribs, broad on the loin, with a straight, level, or 

 even slightly-depressed back, round buttocks, straight and 

 firm legs by no means weak in the knee, large hoofs, very 

 long and bushy tails, the body covered with thick short hair 

 of a red or tawny colour, and they should be very soft 

 handlers (tactu corporis mollissimo)." 



Palladius gives directions in nearly the same words, 

 without, however, intimating that he derived them from 

 Mago a very tidy ox, whether he be purchased in Libya 

 in the year B.C. 600, or in Northamptonshire A.D. 1850. 

 More than one Mago figures in Carthaginian history, but 

 the agricultural writer is supposed to have lived in the 

 time of Darius, and to have been the founder of the great 

 Punic family from which Hannibal sprang. 



Of the Roman agricultural writers Cato claims precedence 

 as first in time, and first in honour. The Censor died, 

 aged 88, in the year 150 B.C. He is treated with great 

 deference, and is much copied by most succeeding authors 

 on the same subjects. He was a practical husbandman, 

 having inherited from his father a Sabine farm. In his 

 writings he recommends careful and precise, but by no 

 means high farming. Most of his maxims tend rather to 

 a limitation of outlay than to active improvement ; and he 

 falls under the lash of Plutarch, for having heartlessly re- 

 commended the sale of worn-out oxen and slaves. When- 

 ever Cato rises to our mind's eye, it is in the form of our 

 venerable friend Joseph Hume. Had we an historical 

 painter, our financial reformer ought to sit to him for the 



