182 AGRICULTURE. 



seed.* This is the substance of what the ancients say in va- 

 rious passages which we are not careful to harmonize, partly 

 because their differences will dwindle when we mention the 

 narrow limits between the thick and thin sowing. With 

 few exceptions they recommend early sowing, and, as was 

 their wont, enforce the practice by an epigrammatic maxim 

 " Early sowing sometimes deceives the husbandman ; 

 late sowing never because the crop after it is always bad." 

 Pliny will not have the joke, probably because he finds it 

 in Columella, and gives the maxim " Early sowing some- 

 time disappoints the husbandman, late sowing always." 

 Their mode of sowing was by hand, broadcast ; or rather, 

 according to the Egyptian drawings, overcast. A two- 

 handed seedsman nowhere appears. We find in Theo- 

 phrastus and Pliny an opinion which lingers still among 

 seedsmen, where it has not been superseded by the drill. 

 The same land was said to require varying quantities of 

 seed in different years, and its taking much was " infausto 

 augurio " for the crop. The land was supposed to be 

 hungry, and to devour the seed. Theophrastus laughs at 

 this as "fool's talk;" but Pliny says it is " religiosum 

 augurium." Dickson explains the matter very naturally. 

 In sowing, the step and hand go together. When the land 

 is clammy the seedsman takes short steps, and gives the 

 field more haudfuls. A clammy seedness is generally fol- 

 lowed by an unproductive harvest. 



The next and last point of practice is the quantity of 

 seed sown : and in our observations upon it we shall con- 

 fine ourselves to wheat. We approach the matter with 

 some anxiety, because on our accuracy respecting it hangs 

 the only chance we have of ascertaining what was the pro- 

 ductive return for all the laborious culture which we have 

 described. We may state as a preliminary, that the 



* Probably he would not meet a farmer who would tell him, with 

 Pliny, that if seed barjey remains long in the ground without vegetating, 

 it will come up oats. 



