ANCIENT AGRICULTURAL LITERATURE. 175 



alpine Gaul as far as the Rhine, he passed through a 

 country having neither olives, vines, nor apples, where 

 they manured the land " Candida fossicia creta." Pliny 

 says that on wet cold land in Megara the Greeks, who 

 tried everything, applied " leucargillon." In Gaul and 

 Britain, however, what we call marling appears to have 

 been a staple practice in husbandry, and to it Pliny devotes 

 several pages. He enumerates six different kinds of marl, 

 called marga, terra fullonia, glischromargon, eglecopala, 

 capnomargos, and other fine names. Some were clayey 

 for light lands ; some sandy for heavy lands ; some rocky, 

 and retaining that form, to the great hindrance of stubble- 

 mowing, till several years of sun, rain, and frost reduced 

 them. Some lasted 10 years, some 30, some 50. Some 

 were got at the day ; and one sort, which lasted 80 years, 

 and which no man had ever been known to apply twice to 

 the same land, was got in Britain by means of narrow pits 

 30 yards deep. The mode of working described by Pliny 

 is similar to a sort of rude coal-getting, which is now 

 sometimes practised, where the seam lies at no greater 

 depth. We have seen superficial marl pits in the midland 

 counties, in which grow the ruins of ancient oaks, acorns 

 perhaps in the time of Pliny. 



The general corn lands of the Romans were not enclosed 

 or fenced, except occasionally against public highways. 

 They were acquainted, however, with every species of 

 fence which is now in use, and applied them to vineyards, 

 gardens, orchards, cattle-folds, and parks in front of the 

 villa in which wild animals were confined, " ut possidentis 

 oblectarent oculos." Palladius, the last of the writers, 

 recommends that meadows should be enclosed. Quick 

 fences " vivas sepes " says Columella, are preferable to 

 dead, because a mischievous fellow going by with a torch 

 cannot set fire to them. They were raised from seed, 

 with much preparation and culture, in which pea-meal and 

 old ship ropes bear a conspicuous part. Directions may 

 be found in one or other of these authors for raising every 



