20 VARRO ON FARMING [bk. 



farming, and are for that reason to be rejected. 

 As though, said he, you couldn't find in other 

 writers, too, examples of the same kind. Why, in 

 the book which the great Cato published on agri- 

 culture, are there not scores, for example : how to 

 make a placenta^ or a libum, or how to salt hams? 

 You don't give, said Agrius, the remarkable pre- 

 scription, '' If you should wish to drink deep and 

 eat freely at a dinner-party, you ought beforehand 

 to have eaten raw cabbage in vinegar, some five 

 leaves"! 



CHAPTER III 



AGRICULTURE AN ART 



Well, said Agrasius, seeing that we decided 

 what kind of things were to be kept apart from 

 agriculture, will you gentlemen tell us whether the 

 knowledge employed in farming is an art or other- 

 wise, and what is its starting-point, what its goal? 



Said Stolo, after looking at Scrofa, It is for you 

 to tell us, as you are our superior in age, in rank, 

 and in knowledge of the subject. He, nothing 

 loth, began: 



In the first place, it is not only an art, but an 

 art as important as it is necessary; it teaches us 

 what crops are to be sown and what methods adopted 

 on each and every soil, and what kind of land yields 

 continuously the greatest increase. 



