i! THE SITE 29 



XI ait is of better quality. For the same reason some 

 plants can live only in a watery place, or even in 

 water itself, and this again with a difference, for 

 some can grow in lakes only, as reeds in the Reatine 

 country; others in rivers, as in Epirus alder-trees; 

 others in the sea, as palms and squills do according 

 ; to Theophrastus. When I was in command of an 

 army in Transalpine Gaul — in the interior near the 

 Rhine — I came to several districts where neither 

 vine, olive, nor fruit-tree would grow, where they 

 manured the fields with **marne,"^ dug from the 

 ground, where they could get salt neither by dig- 

 ging nor from the sea, but used instead of it salt 

 charcoal made by the burning of certain woods. 



Said Stolo, Cato arranges the different kinds of 

 land in order of merit and divides them into nine 

 classes. In the first he places land on which you 

 can have vineyards yielding plenty of good wine; 

 in the second, well-watered garden land; in the 

 third, that in which willows can be grown; in the 

 fourth, lands suitable for olive yards; in the fifth 

 meadow lands, in the sixth corn lands; in the 

 seventh, woods for timber; in the eighth, small 

 trees, and in the ninth, land suitable for an oak- 

 forest yielding acorns. 



I am aware, said Scrofa, that Cato wrote thus; 

 but it is not everyone who agrees with him; 



* Candida f OS sicia Creta no doubt is "marne" — a natural 

 mixture of lime and clay — which is still much used in France 

 as manure. It is the marga or Candida argilla (Pliny, N. H., 

 xvii, 7), called by tlie Cireeks XiuxofiytAXoi:. 



