MY VINEYARD. 135 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



ANCIENT METHODS OF CULTURE. 



I have been somewhat interested and instructed by a 

 study of ancient methods of culture. One is not a little 

 surprised to find, as the result of his studies, that our 

 knowledge of horticulture, of which we are not unfre- 

 quently ready to boast, is in many departments scarcely a 

 step in advance of theirs who lived thirty centuries ago. 

 In the matter of grafting it is probable that our skill is 

 not equal to that of the ancients. As regards the vine in 

 the old world, the methods of culture seem to have chang- 

 ed but little since the days of Hesiod, who w^rote largely 

 upon the subject three thousand years ago. This was 

 more than a thousand years before the days of Pliny, 

 whose own voluminous works are eighteen centuries old, 

 but for soundness and accuracy in many particulars have 

 hardly been surpassed up to the present time. It is true 



