ANCIENT AGRICULTURAL LITERATURE. 147 



directions, partly moral and partly physical, on the selection 

 and management of agricultural slaves : three on the vine, 

 olive, and orchard fruits two on agricultural and domestic 

 animals, from which, on prudential grounds, he excludes 

 the sporting-dog one on poultry one on bees. In the 

 9th book he attempts, with small success, the supplement 

 to the Georgics which Virgil indicated : 



" Verum hasc ipse equidem spatiis inclusus iniquis 

 Praetereo, atque aliis post rne memoranda relinquo," 



and breaks into verse on the subject of gardening. Three 

 more books treat of the bailiff, his wife, wine, vinegar, 

 jampots, and the kitchen garden. 



Pliny died A.D. 79. His contributions to the agricultural 

 library are a small portion of the great work which he has 

 left as a monument of his industry and research. We have 

 no reason to suppose that he had any personal knowledge 

 of agriculture. He was in that instance, as in many others, 

 a diligent, but not always a discriminating compiler. Of 

 the elder authors, to whose own works we can still refer, he 

 uses most freely Mago, Cato, Varro, and Virgil. He speaks 

 of Columella, but for the most part slightingly. 



Palladius published A.D. 355. He was a lauded proprietor 

 in Sardinia, and also near Naples. He wrote fourteen 

 books of a farmer's calendar, and a poem on the art of 

 grafting. He seems to have been rather a servile copyist 

 from the older writers, but his work was much esteemed in 

 the middle ages, and was translated into English, in 1803, 

 by Thomas Owen. 



Thus we have before us a series of literature, devoted to 

 one object, extending over eight, and, in the Roman de- 

 partment alone, over five centuries. No one can wade 

 through the whole mass without observing the striking 

 fact, that neither at the end, nor during any part, of the 

 series, does agriculture present itself as a progressive art. 

 We are introduced to no improvements, to no newly-in- 

 vented implements ; we are told of no practices abandoned 



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