Cato's Farm Management 



Of Feeding Live Stock 

 (xxx) As long as they are avail- 

 able, feed green leaves of elm, pop- 

 lar, oak and fig to your cattle and 

 sheep. 



(v) Store leaves, also, to be fed 

 to the sheep before they have 

 withered.^ 



(xxx) Take the best of care of 

 your dry fodder, which you house 

 for the winter, and remember always 

 how long the winter may last. 



was the nurse of Italy, because if one left his survey- 

 ing instruments there on the ground over night they 

 were lost next day in the growth of grass." 



This sounds like the boast of the modern proprie- 

 tor of an old blue grass sod in Northern Virginia or 

 Kentucky. 



But Cato was fully alive to the opportunity af- 

 forded by broad pastures of natural grass in an 

 entirely different system of farming. Pliny (N. H. 

 XVIII, 7) tells that Cato on being asked what was 

 the most certain source of profit in farming, re- 

 plied: "Good pasture land," and second, "Pretty 

 good pasture land." Columella (VI, 1) translates 

 this "feeding cattle," but the point of the anecdote 

 is the same. 



1 Was this ensilage? The ancients had their silo 

 pits, but they used them chiefly as granaries, and as 

 such they are described, by Varro (I, 57, 63), by 

 Columella (I, 6), and by Pliny (XVIII, 30, 73). 



[52I 



