BOOK II. II. 9-12 



mouths of the open ditches.*^ But it will be best 

 to make open drains wider at the top, and sloping 

 and narrowing together at the bottom, like inverted 

 roof-tiles ; for those whose sides are perpendicular 

 are quickly eroded by water and are filled in by the 

 shpping of the earth above. The covered ones, on 10 

 the other hand, are to be blinded by sinking trenches 

 to a depth of three feet, and then, after they have 

 received a filling half way up of small stones or clean 

 gravel, levelling them off by throwing over them the 

 dirt that was dug out. Or, if stones and gravel are not 

 available, a sort of cable of entwined brushwood will be 

 fashioned of such a thickness as the bottom of the 

 narrow trench may receive when it is fitted, so to speak, 

 and pressed down close. This ^^^ll then be stretched 11 

 along the bottom, to be covered over with earth after 

 cypress or pine foliage — or, failing this, other 

 boughs — has been trampled down over it; there 

 being, both at the beginning and at the outlet of the 

 ditch, two stones set up, merely by way of supports, 

 with one stone laid on top of them in the fashion of 

 little bridges, that this sort of structure may hold 

 the banks in place and prevent the stoppage of water 

 at inlet and outlet. 



There are two methods of handhng a wooded and 

 bushy stretch of land : either by tearing out the trees 

 by the roots and removing them or, if they are few, 

 by simply cutting them down, burning them, and 

 ploughing them under. It is easy to clear stony 12 



Lundstrom's text. Earlier editors read ut in patentes ora 

 hiantia caecarum competant, " that the gaping mouths of the 

 blind ditches may connect with those that are open." On the 

 subject of ditching, cf. Cato, 43. 1, 155; and especially Pliny, 

 N.H. XYIII. 47, and Palladius, VI. 3. 



"5 



