BOOK XVIII. Liv. 197-LV. 200 



niethod used by certain people that hick is kind to 

 them and brings a good return. Seed should not be 

 transferred from cold places to warm ones nor from 

 early ripening districts to late ones, and nothing 

 should be transferred in the contrary directitms 

 either, as some people out of mistaken ingenuity 

 have advised. 



L\'. The right amounts of seed per acre to sovv in Amouiit o/ 

 soil of medium quaUty are : bare or common wheat 5 ^ " 

 pecks, emmer or seed (the kind of grain " to which 

 we give tliat name) 10 ; barley 6, beans a fifth more 

 than in the case of wheat, vetch 12, chick-pea, 

 chickling vetch and peas 3, lupine 10, lentil 3 (but 

 people Hke to sow lentils mixed with dry dung), 

 bitter vetch 6, fenugreek 6, calavances 4, hay- 

 grass 20, common and ItaHan miHets a quarter of a 

 peck, or more in a rich soil and less in a thin one. 

 There is also another distinction to make : in thick 

 or chalky or moist soil 6 peeks of bare or common 

 wheat, but in loose and dry and fertile soil 4 ; for 

 a meagre soil makes a small and empty ear unless 

 it has the corn stalks far apart, whereas fields with 

 a rich soil produce a number of stalks from a single 

 seed and yield a thick crop from thinly scattered 

 seed. Consequentlv the rule given is to sow be- 

 tween four and six pecks, adding or subtracting a 

 fifth in accordance with the nature of the soil, and 

 the same in a densely planted place or on sloping 

 land as in thin soil. To this appHes that oracuhir 

 utterance, which it is so important to observe : ' Do rt>n«oy 

 not grudge the cornfield its seed.' To this Attius in his *""''"<'• 

 Praxidike added the advice to sovv when the moon 

 is in the constellations of the Ram, the Twins, the 

 Lion,the Scales and Aquarius, but Zoroaster advised 



