176 AGRICULTURE. 



sort of fence which now prevails in Great Britain or Ire- 

 land. Pliny particularly describes the frame by means of 

 which such mud walls as are now seen in Buckinghamshire 

 and adjoining counties were reared. He limits them to 

 Africa and Spain. 



Notwithstanding the ameliorations of climate which we 

 are told to hope for from draining, we do not expect to see 

 vines an object of the British farmer's culture, nor wine- 

 making one of his household labours ; we shall, therefore, 

 merely intimate that any one who is anxious to learn " the 

 ancient " practice in these matters, will find ample informa- 

 tion in the agricultural writers. Beer comes home to our 

 sympathies. Pliny says bluntly enough "The western 

 nations have their own way of getting drunk, by steeping 

 barley. In Gaul and Britain the ladies use the yeast 

 (spuman) as a cosmetic." This art, we fear, is lost; but if 

 the patriotic Member for Derby will listen to the voice of 

 antiquity, Bass's Kalydor may become as celebrated as his 

 Pale Ale. The second use of yeast survives. These na- 

 tions, says Pliny, used it for fermenting their bread: 

 " Qua de causa levior illis quam caeteris panis est." But 

 the use of beer was not confined to the western nations. 

 The Egyptian zythus was beer Suidas says a wo *ptS^ 

 v-owevo? made of barley and Pelusium was the Burton- 

 on-Trent of Egypt : 



" Ut Pelusiaci proritet pocula zythi." 



Moreover, the Egyptians, being destitute of hops, flavoured 

 their ale with the bitter lupine, and with an acrid wild 

 carrot, of which Pliny says "nemo tres siseres edendo 

 continuaret." Wilkinson, most properly, devotes two or 

 three pages to the Egyptian zythus. In Spain they made 

 beer which would keep for several years. Tacitus speaks 

 of German beer more scornfully than is consistent with its 

 modern reputation. " Potui humor ex hordeo aut fermento 

 in quandam similitudinem vini corruptus." 



Beer runs through all the classics. Athenaeus says. that 



