BOOK II. IV. 3-6 



champaign lands, then, should be broken after the 

 Ides of April." When they are ploughed at this 4 

 time, they should be gone over a second time after the 

 passing of the twenty days around the solstice — 

 which falls on the ninth or eighth day before the 

 Calends of July '' — and then a third time in the 

 neighbourhood of the Calends of September ; " for it 

 is agreed among experts in husbandry that no 

 ploughing should be done from the summer solstice 

 up to this time, unless, as sometimes happens, the 

 eai'th is soaked with heavy and sudden showers as if 

 by winter rains. In this case there is no objection 5 

 to breaking fallow land in the month of July. But 

 whenever the ploughing is done, we must be careful 

 not to let a field be worked when it is muddy or half 

 soaked from light rains — a condition of soil which 

 farmers call va7-ia and cariosa ; ** that is, when, after a 

 long drought, a light rain wets the upper surface 

 of the clods but does not reach the lower part. For 

 ploughlands which are turned over when they are 

 muddy cannot be worked for a whole year, and they 

 are not fit for sowing or harrowing or planting ; but, 

 on the other hand, those which are ploughed when 

 they are varia are visited with barrenness for three 

 successive years.* Let us, then, above all, follow a 6 

 middle course in ploughing our lands, that they may 

 neither be entirely wanting in dampness nor immoder- 

 ately wet ; for too much moisture, as I have said, 

 makes them sticky and muddy, while those that are 

 parched with drought cannot be properly loosened. 



<* Cf. Cato, 5. 6. Pliny (N.U. XVII. 3^35), commenting on 

 Cato's precept, compares carious ground with the rottenness of 

 wood, as being dry, spongy, full of holes, weak, unfruitful, and 

 not fit for anything. 



" Cf. Palladius, II. 3. 2-3. 



