BOOK XVIII. Lxxiii. 304-308 



richness of the juice, which may be enouijh to supplv 

 moisture, as with sesame, or in bitter flavour," as with 

 lupine and chickling vetch. It is specially in wheat 

 that grubs breed, because its density makes it get 

 hot and the grain becomes covered with thick bran. 

 Barley chaff is thinner, and also that of the leguminous 

 plants is scanty, and consequently these do not breed 

 grubs. A bean is covered with thicker coats, and 

 this makes it ferment. Some people sprinkle the 

 wheat itself with dregs of olivc oil to make it keep 

 better, cight gallons to a thousand pecks ; others 

 use chalk from Chalcis or Caria for this purpose, or 

 even wormwood. There is also an earth found at 

 Olynthus and at Cerinthus in Euboea which prevents 

 grain from rotting ; also if stored in the ear corn 

 hardly ever suffers injury. The most paying method 

 however of keeping grain is in holes, called siri, 

 as is done in Cappadocia and Thrace, and in Spain 

 and Africa ; and before all tliings care is taken to 

 make them in dry soil and then to floor them with 

 chaff ; moreover the corn is stored in this way in the 

 ear. If no air is allowed to penetrate, it is certain 

 that no pests ^\ill breed in the grain. Varro states i. 58. 

 that wheat so stored lasts fifty years, but millet a 

 hundred, and that beans and leguminous grain, if 

 put away in oil jars with a covering of ashes, keep a 

 long time. He also records that beans stored in a 

 cavem in Ambracia lasted from the period of King 

 Pyrrhus to Pompey the Great's war with the pirates,* 

 a period of about 220 years. Chick-pea is the only 

 grain which does not breed any grubs when kept in 

 barns. Some people pile leguminous seed in heaps 

 on to jars containing vinegar, placed on a bed of ashes 

 and coated \vith pitch, believing that this prevents 



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