RESULTS TO BE EXPECTED 41 



Two well-groomed, healthy cows, one calving in the 

 spring and one in the autumn, can be made a source of profit, 

 and of valuable manure, if you have land enough in a neigh- 

 borhood where up-to-date parents are willing to pay ten 

 to twenty cents a quart for pure milk for their infants or 

 even for family use. But your land and your own baby's 

 care and milk will probably be enough for you to attend to 

 promptly and thoroughly every day and night. 



It is an age-old experience that if we take care of a little 

 land, the land will take care of us. In Ferrero's " Grandezza 

 e Decadenza di Roma" is an interesting account of Marcus 

 Terentius Varro's "De Re Rustica." Varro wrote in the 

 year 37 B.C., and as he was then eighty years old, he had 

 seen the transformation of Italy from an agricultural to a 

 manufacturing, trading community and the accompanying 

 wreck of the old agricultural system, which, of course, he 

 laments. 



The growth of vast landed estates largely held by imperial 

 favorites, as Pliny said, destroyed Italy. So fearful has the 

 destruction been that it is only in our generation that the 

 Campagna at Rome, which was once an intensely fruitful 

 quilt of garden patches, has been reclaimed from the fever- 

 smitten swamp to which vast landlordism had reduced it. 



In the third book of "De Re Rustica," Varro recom- 

 mends as his remedy, intensive cultivation close to the 

 cities, and the breeding of "fancy stock," including 

 pigeons, snails, peacocks, deer, and wild boars. 



He tells how an aunt of his made 60,000 sesterces ($3000) 

 in one year by raising thrushes for the Roman market, at 

 a time when an excellent farm of about 200 acres only yielded 

 30,000 sesterces per annum. He quotes another case of 

 one who made 40,000 sesterces per annum from a flock of 



