Cato^s Farm Management 



into the roads, and the crops be pro- 

 tected. 



Of Preparing the Seed Bed 



(lxi) What is the first princi- 

 ple of good agriculture? To plow 

 welL What is the second? To plow 

 again; and the third is to manure. 

 When you plow corn land, plow well 

 and in good weather, lest you turn a 

 cloddy furrow. The other things of 

 good agriculture are to sow good 

 seed^ plentifully, to thin the young 

 sprouts, and to hill up the roots with 

 earth. 



(v) Never plow rotten land^ 

 nor drive flocks or carts across it. 



1 Seed selection, which is now preached so earn- 

 estly by the Agricultural Department of the United 

 States as one of the things necessary to increase the 

 yield of wheat and corn, has ever been good prac- 

 tice. Virgil (Georgic I, 197) mentions it: "I have 

 seen those seeds on whose selection much time and 

 labour had been spent, nevertheless degenerate if 

 men did not every year rigorously separate by hand 

 all the largest specimens." 



2 Pliny (H. N. XVII, 3) undertakes with more 

 rhetoric than conviction to explain this passage: 



"Cato briefly, and in his peculiar manner, charac- 



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