ROMAN AGRICULTURE. 401 



directions how to form the kiln and burn it. He prefers a 

 truncated cone, ten feet in diameter at the bottom, twenty feet 

 high, and three feet in diameter at the top. The grate covers 

 the whole bottom ; there is a pit below for the ashes, and two 

 furnace doors, one for drawing out the burnt stone, and the 

 other for admitting air to the fire. The fuel used was wood or 

 charcoal. Marl was known to the earlier Roman authors, but 

 not used in Italy. It is mentioned by Pliny as having been 

 "found out in Britain and Gaul." " It is a certain richness of 

 earth," he says, "like the kernels in animal bodies that are 

 increased by fatness." He adds that "marl was known to the 

 Greeks ; for is there anything that has not been tried by them ? 

 They call the marl-like white clay leiicargillos , which they use 

 in the lands of Megara, but only where they are moist and 

 cold." But though the Romans did not use marl, because they 

 had not discovered it in Italy, they were aware, as Varro and 

 others inform us, of its use. " When I marched an army," says 

 Varro, "to the Rhine in Transalpine Gaul, I passed through 

 some countries where I saw the fields manured with white fossil 

 clay." This must have been either marl or chalk. 



In reaping grain, it was a maxim that it is " better to reap 

 two days too soon, than two days too late." Varro mentions 

 three modes of performing the operation, cutting close to the 

 ground with hooks, a handful at a time ; cutting off their ears 

 with a curved stick and a saw attached ; and cutting the stalks 

 in the middle, leaving the lower part, or stubble, to be cut after- 

 ward. Columella says : " Many cut the stalks by the middle, 

 with drag-hooks, and these either beaked or toothed ; many 

 gather the ears with mergce, and others with combs." This 

 method does very well when the crop is thin, but it is very 

 troublesome when the grain is thick. If, in reaping with hooks, 

 a part of the straw is cut off with the ears, it is immediately 

 gathered into a heap, and, after being dried by being exposed 

 to the sun, is threshed. But if the ears only are cut off, they 

 are carried directly to the granary, and threshed during the 

 winter. To these modes Pliny adds that of pulling up by the 

 roots, and remarks, that " generally, where they cover their 

 houses with stubble, they cut high, to preserve this of as great 



