C a t o ' s Farm Management 



(vi) Where the soil is rich and 

 fertile, without shade, there the corn 

 land ought to be. Where the land 



usually content to let the stubble dry out before plow- 

 ing. 



The Romans were careful also about rotation of 

 crops. Virgil (Georgics I, 82) expresses the advice, 

 "Thus, too, your land will be refreshed by changing 

 the crops, and in the meantime there is not the 

 unproductiveness of untilled land." 



Liming as an amendment of the soil and to correct 

 the acidity of old corn land, was apparently not 

 practiced by the Romans in Cato's time, but it would 

 have been most useful then as now in connection 

 with the ploughing in of green legumes. The 

 Romans, of course, had lime in plenty. Cato 

 (XXXVIII), and after him Palladius (I, 10), tells 

 how to burn limestone, but this was for masonry 

 work. Pliny (H. N, XVII, 4) says that liming for 

 soil improvement was known among the Transalpine 

 Gauls: "The Aedui and the Pictores have rendered 

 their lands remarkably fertile by the aid of lime 

 stone, which is also found to be particularly bene- 

 ficial to the olive and the vine." 



The Romans did not have the fight against sour 

 land which is the heritage of the modern farmer 

 after years of continuous application to his land of 

 phosphoric and sulphuric acid in the form of mineral 

 fertilizers. What sour land the Romans had they 

 corrected with humus making barnyard manure, or 

 the rich compost which Cato recommends. They had, 

 however, a test for sourness of land which is still 

 practiced even where the convenient litmus paper is 

 available. Virgil (Georgics II, 241) gives the form- 

 ula: "Fill a basket with soil, and strain fresh water 

 through it. The taste of water strained through sour 

 soil will twist awry the taster's face." 



I48I 



