BOOK II. xn. 9-xni. 3 



of rest. Thus the total amounts to eight months and 

 ten days. Still there are left of the year three months 

 and twenty-five days, which we may spend either 

 in sowing three-months crops or in the hauling of 

 hay, forage, manure, and of other useful things. 



XIII. But of the crops that I have mentioned, the 

 same Saserna thinks that land is fertilized and 

 improved by some, and, on the other hand, that it is 

 burned out and wasted by others ; that it is fertilized 

 by lupine, beans, vetch, bitter vetch, lentils, the 

 small chickpea, and peas. As to the lupine I have 

 no doubt, nor yet as to vetch when it is sown for 

 fodder, provided, however, that after being cut green 

 it be followed up immediately by the plough, and 

 that the ploughshare cut up and bury, before it dries 

 out, what is left by the sickle ; for this takes the place 

 of manure. For if the roots are left to dry out after 2 

 the fodder is cut, they will draw all the moisture out 

 of the soil and use up the strength of the land ; and it 

 is probable that this happens also in the case of beans 

 and other legumes by which the ground appears to 

 be enriched ; so tliat, unless the ground is broken up 

 at once after a crop of them has been taken off, it will 

 be of no benefit to the crops which are to be planted 

 in that spot thereafter. Of those legumes, too, which 3 

 are harvested by pulling, Tremelius says that the 

 poisons of the chickpea and of flax are most harmful 

 to the soil, the one because it is of a salty nature, the 

 other because of its burning qualities ; and Vergil, 

 too, points this out when he says : 



A field is burned by crops of flax, is burned by 



crops of oats. 

 Is burned by crops of poppies with Lethaean 



slumber steeped." 



193 



