C a t o' s Farm M a n a g e 7n e n t 



If care is not taken about this, the 

 land so abused will be barren for 

 three years. 



terizes the defects that exist in the various soils. 

 'Take care,' he says, 'where the earth is rotten not to 

 shake it either with carts or by driving cattle over 

 it.' Now what are we to suppose that this term 'rot- 

 ten' means as applied to a soil, about which he is so 

 vastly apprehensive as to almost forbid our setting 

 foot upon it? Let us only form a comparison by 

 thinking what it is that constitutes rottenness in 

 wood and we shall find that the faults which are 

 held by him in such aversion are the being arid, full 

 of holes, rough, white, mouldly, worm eaten, in fact 

 just like pumice stone: and thus has Cato said more 

 in a single word than we could have possibly found 

 means to express in a description however long." 



One is tempted to extend this note to include 

 Pliny's observations upon the tests of good soil if 

 only for the sake of his description of one of the 

 sweetest sensations of the farmer every where, the 

 aroma of new ploughed fertile land: — 



"We may in this place appropriately make men- 

 tion of an opinion that has been pronounced by an 

 Italian writer also with reference to a matter of 

 luxury. Cicero, that other luminary of literature, 

 has made the following remark: "Those unguents 

 which have a taste of earth are better," says he, 

 "than those which smack of saflFron," it seeming to 

 him more to the purpose to express himself by the 

 word taste than smell. And such is the fact no 

 doubt, that soil is the best which has the flavour of 

 a perfume. If the question should be put to us, 

 what is this odour of the earth that is held in such 

 estimation; our answer is that it is the same that 

 is often to be recognized at the moment of sunset 

 without the necessity even of turning up the ground, 

 at the spots where the extremities of the rainbow 

 have been observed to meet the earth: as also, when 



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