10 AGRICULTURE : 



scientific and profitable branch of the art.* Like 

 their own Nile, their population had its overflow, 

 which colonized Carthage and Greece,! and carried 

 with it the talent and intelligence of the mother 

 country. The former of these states, though es- 

 sentially commercial, had its plantations; and so 

 highly prized were the agricultural works of Mago, 

 that, when Carthage was captured, they alone, of 

 the many books found in it, were retained and trans- 

 lated by the Romans. A similar inference may be 

 drawn from the history of Greece; for assuredly 

 that art could not have been either unknown or 

 neglected which so long employed the pen and the 

 tongue of the great Xenophon.J It must, 'however, 

 be admitted that, of the ancient nations, it is only 

 among the Romans that we find real and multiplied 

 evidences of the progress of the art ; facts substi- 

 tuted for conjectures and inferences. Cato, Varro, 

 Columella, Virgil, and Pliny, wrote on the subject, 

 and it is from their works we derive the following 

 brief exposition of Roman husbandry. 



The plough, the great instrument of agricultural 

 labour, was well known and generally used among 

 the Romans, and was drawn exclusively by horned 

 cattle. Of fossil manures we know that they used 

 lime, and probably marl, and that those of animal 

 and vegetable basis were carefully collected. At- 

 tention to this subject made part of the national re- 



* The best practical illustration of this opinion is found in 

 the Valley of the Po, where " every rood of earth maintains its 

 man." 



. t The Egyptians might have sent some colonies into these 

 countries ; but the commonly received opinion is, that the Pe- 

 lasgi first settled Greece, and that Carthage was founded by a 

 company of Phoenicians under Queen Dido. 



J Xenophon wrote several treatises on husbandry, and gave 

 public lectures on it at Scillonte, whither a weak and wicked 

 government had banished him. 



For the first part of this assertion we have the authority of 

 Pliny ; for the latter, the practice of their colonies both in Gaul 

 and Britain. 



