160 AGRICULTURE. 



pastured till February or March. The manure, which 

 should be the greenest you have, " recentissimum," and 

 which may with advantage have hay-seeds mixed with it, 

 should be laid in February on such parts of the meadow 

 as cannot be watered. It seems probable that the majority 

 of Koman meadows were ill-drained, so much stress is laid 

 on the evil of treading them with cattle. Pigs also were 

 interdicted, on account of their rooting propensities. M. 

 Porcius is brought forward to testify to the value of mea- 

 dows. They are less subject to injury by storms than any 

 other part of the farm ; they require the least expenditure ; 

 they give a crop every year, and, indeed, more than one, 

 for the pasturage of the aftermath is of as much value as 

 the hay. The Campus Rosea is said to have been the 

 most valuable plot of land in Italy. We had hoped, and 

 indeed believed, that the story of the stick was genuine 

 Leicestershire ; but Caesar Vopiscus, the redile, is produced 

 both by Varro and Pliny, to vouch that in that celebrated 

 field he laid down his stick overnight, and could not find it 

 in the morning, because it was smothered in grass. The 

 time which we claim, however, on behalf of Cestus Over 

 is not a whole night, but only while the farmer ate his 

 dinner and smoked one pipe. 



The Romans frequently mowed their meadows twice, 

 first in May, and secondly in August or September, and 

 watered them between the mowings. They mixed the 

 second crop with oak and elm leaves, and used it as fodder 

 for sheep. Dickson calculates, on somewhat uncertain 

 grounds, that the first mowing of a Roman meadow pro- 

 duced more than two and a half tons of hay to the statute 

 acre. That the crops were large appears probable. To 

 mow a jugerum, three-fifths of a statute acre in a day, is 

 said to require a good workman, whereas an ordinary Eng- 

 lish labourer reckons an acre to be a day's work. All the 

 writers prescribe that the grass should be cut before the 

 seed is ripe, and before the stalk has become dry. Pliny 

 boasts of a discovery of whetstones, which would sharpen 



