386 SOME THOUGHTS ON 



himself and his family comfortably. The remark, if I may say- 

 so, appears to be singularly inconclusive. As the man was a 

 vigneron, we may presume that his chief occupation was growing 

 grapes ; and how would it have been if his 11 pezze had been all 

 under glass ? and he had devoted himself to the culture of pine 

 apples? The question is not within what area a gainful in- 

 dustry may be carried on, but what acreage per head of the 

 population is necessary to secure a given degree of comfort, and 

 whether the best possible use is made of it by dividing it into 

 allotments. If Sancho's piece of cloth had belonged to five bro- 

 thers, it might still have been better to make one wearable cap 

 of it than one for each. The cases are not quite parallel, and 

 there is doubtless much to be said in favour of small properties, 

 but the question cannot be settled in the present state of things 

 by individual instances, even if the question were not compli- 

 cated by the existence of common rights of pasturage. Colu- 

 mella, Book III. chap. 5, speaks of rows, ordines, 240 feet in 

 length and 3 feet apart, as the allowance for a jugerum. In each 

 row there are 60 vines, and in the whole 2400. Thus if we 

 divide the jugerum into 4 quarters by lines parallel to its shorter 

 ends, we get, as in the quarter pezza, 40 rows, and each row of 

 about the length of an ordine. The transition preserved the num- 

 ber of rows, but removed an objection to Columella's arrange- 

 ment, namely, that the interval between trees in the same row is 

 not equal to that between the rows, whereby Virgil's precept 

 " to set vines square so that they may have an equal supply of 

 nourishment all round" is transgressed. The change also in- 

 creased the amount of ground for each vine from 12 to 18 feet, 

 diminishing- the number of vines from 600 to 400. I do not 

 know whether the error in the text of the edition I have has 

 been corrected. By it he is made to speak of 600 vines in a row 

 of 240 feet, and of a total of 24000, numbers which are abso- 

 lutely incredible. In the preceding chapter, when speaking of 

 the number of cuttings which before the vines have grown up 

 may be put between the rows and taken up when they have be- 

 come viviradices, he allows 20000 to be planted. In this there 

 is nothing which is not quite natural. They may then be put, I 

 suppose, nearly as thick as asparagus, and perhaps the tran- 

 scriber was misled by not seeing that Columella was speaking 

 in the 5th chapter of the permanent arrangement of the vineyard. 



