ANCIENT AGRICULTURAL LITERATURE. 181 



introduced. The roller is hollow, supported by a frame- 

 work inside, in diameter about two-thirds of the height of 

 the horses, and the drawing would be no inaccurate repre- 

 sentation of a modern agricultural iron roller. We are not 

 aware that the use of such an implement in husbandry is 

 mentioned by any of the ancient writers. If Columella had 

 been acquainted with its use, he would not have recom 

 mended that land, laid down for meadow, should be 

 smoothed by an instrument which, according to his own 

 account, worked so clumsily as the crates. We have already, 

 seen, that, in compressing a threshing-floor, a piece of a 

 broken column was pressed into the service as a makeshift 

 roller. The Komans might have valued this implement as 

 a breaker of clods, and as an assistant to fine tilth ; but 

 not a single passage intimates that they sympathised with 

 our idea of the advantage of a firm bed for the roots of 

 corn. Quite the contrary. Perhaps, in the climate of 

 Italy, their crops were not so liable to be top-heavy as ours 

 are. Perhaps the young plant was not so liable to be 

 thrown out by frost. 



When we come to sowing, the remarkable unanimity 

 which, on moist points of practice, pervades the old authors, 

 gives way to a diversity that sorely perplexes the minister 

 of Whittingham. That candid judge expends much unsuc- 

 cessful labour in attempts to reconcile their opinions ; and, 

 where this is hopeless, would fain make out that none of 

 them can be convicted of heterodoxy. The directions given 

 by them are very analogous to those which any gentleman 

 would receive, if he were to enter an English county on 

 one side, and ask the opinion of every farmer he met till 

 he went out on the other. One would tell him to sow thin, 

 because his land was poor, another because it was rich. A 

 third would say, ** Be liberal with your seed, because you 

 are early in the season ; " and a fourth would advise the 

 same " because you are late." A fifth and sixth would 

 differ as to whether wet land, or dry, required the most 



