C a t o ' s Farm Management 



made, and you will get larger crops. 

 The face of the master is good for 

 the land.' 



(Vl) Plant elm trees along the 

 roads and fence rows, so that you may 

 have the leaves to feed the sheep and 

 cattle, and the timber will be avail- 

 able if you need it. If any where 

 there are banks of streams or wet 



1 According to German scholarship the accepted 

 text of Cato's version of this immemorial epigram is 

 a model of the brevity which is the test of wit, 

 Frons occipitio prior est. Pliny, probably quoting 

 from memory, expands it to Frons domini plus 

 prodest quam occipitium. Palladius (I, 6) gives 

 another version: Praesentia domini provectus est 

 agri. It is found in some form in alniost every 

 book on agriculture since Cato: in La Maison Rusti- 

 que that delightful XVI Century thesaurus of 

 French agricultural lore, in the innumerable works 

 of Gervase Markham that XVII Century L. H. 

 Bailey, and in the pleasant XIX Century essays of 

 Donald G. Mitchell. The present editor saw it 

 recently in the German comic paper Fliegende 

 Blatter. But the jest is much older than Cato. In 

 Xenophon's Oeconomicus (XII, 20) it appears in 

 another form: 



"The reply attributed to the barbarian," added 

 Ischomachus, "appears to me to be exceedingly to 

 the purpose, for when the King of Persia having met 

 with a fine horse and wishing to have it fattened 

 as soon as possible, asked one of those who were con- 

 sidered knowing about horses what would fatten a 

 horse soonest, it is said that he answered 'the master's 

 eye.' " 



[30I 



