ANCIENT AGRICULTURAL LITERATURE. 161 



a scythe with water ; whereas the Cretan whetstones, 

 which alone were known to their ancestors, would only 

 sharpen with oil, in consequence of which every mower 

 had a horn of that liniment tied to his leg. The Italians 

 used short, the Gauls long scythes. Every maxim of Eng- 

 lish, and even of Scotch haymaking is diligently set forth : 

 precautions against rain, against undersweating, and over- 

 heating. Pliny supposes that when hay is got too green 

 the sun sets the ricks on fire. We have by no means ex- 

 hausted the subject; but 



" Claudite jam rivos; forsan sat prata biberunt." 



The Roman agricultural course, with the partial excep- 

 tions to which we shall have occasion to advert, was of the 

 simplest possible description a crop of grain and a fal- 

 low. Every year one-half of the arable land was in grain, 

 one-half in fallow. One-third of the fallow was sown with 

 some sort of green crop to be mowed for the cattle, and 

 this portion of the fallow, and this alone, was manured ; 

 the result being, that the arable land was manured once in 

 six years, and in that period bore three grain crops and 

 one green crop.* This we should bear in mind when we 

 come to consider what effect a long perseverance in this 

 course had on production. The naked fallow received 

 three or four ploughings during the summer, besides the 

 seed furrow. To sow the grain in autumn was considered 

 to be far the best practice ; but any portion of the land 

 which, from bad weather or other impediments, could not 

 be completed in autumn, was sown in spring. The grain 

 was wheat or barley. The wheat was of many varieties ; 

 white, red, black, bearded, and smooth are expressly men- 

 tioned ; and these do not exhaust the catalogue of names. 



* Dickson ascertains by an elaborate calculation that, on a well- 

 managed farm, sufficient dung was made to manure three -tenths of the 

 laud annually. It appears, however, from Cato and other writers, that 

 a large portion of the manure was devoted to grapes, olives, and other 

 fruit. Cato assigns half to fruit and half to grain, which would make 

 the portion of arable land manured annually even less than we have 

 stated. 



