C a t o* s Farm Management 



Of Soil Improvement 

 (xxxvil) The things which are 

 harmful to corn land are to plow the 

 ground when it is rotten, and to 

 plant chick peas which are harvested 

 with the straw and are salt. Barley, 

 fenugreek and pulse all exhaust corn 

 land, as well as all other things which 

 are harvested with the straw. Do 

 not plant nut trees in the corn land. 

 On the other hand, lupines, field 

 beans and vetch manure corn land.* 



tional highway from Paris to Tours, through the/ 

 pleasant pays de Beauce, can see this admirable and 

 economical method of manuring still in practice. 

 The sheep are folded and fed at night, under the 

 watchful eye of the shepherd stretched at ease in 

 his wheeled cabin, on the land which was ploughed 

 the day before. 



^ These of course are all legumes. The intelli- 

 gent farmer today sits under his shade tree and 

 meditates comfortably upon the least expensive and 

 most profitable labor on his farm, the countless 

 millions of beneficent bacteria who, his willing 

 slaves, are ceaselessly at work during hot weather 

 forming root tubercles on his legumes, be it clover 

 or cow peas, and so fixing for their lord the free at- 

 mospheric nitrogen contained in the soil. As 

 Macaulay would say, "every school boy knows" now 

 that leguminous root nodules are endotrophic raycor- 

 rhiza, — but the Romans did not! Nevertheless their 



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