PREFATORY NOTE 



Owing to the death of Dr, Harrison Boyd Ash of ' 

 the University of Pennsylvania shortly after the pub- 

 lication of the first volume (Books I-IV) of the De 

 Re Rustica of Columella, the Editors entrusted me 

 with the remainder of the work. 



There has been no complete modern edition of 

 the text since J. G. Schneider's (Leipzig 1794), but 

 the principles laid down by Dr. Ash (Vol. I, p. xxi) 

 appear to me to be entirely satisfactory. He 

 describes them as follows : " The text and manu- 

 script readings of the present edition, for Books 

 I-H, Vl-Vn, X-XI and the De Arboribus, rest 

 substantially on the work of Lundstrom. For 

 Books ni-V, Vni-IX and XH, the translator has 

 attempted to construct a critical text in some 

 approximation to that of Lundstrom by the collation 

 of four major manuscripts with the text of Schneider." 

 It was natural to conclude from these words that a 

 text constructed by Dr. Ash would be available for 

 the rest of the work, but no traces of the existence 

 of such a text have been found in America. It has, 

 therefore, been necessary to undertake the con- 

 struction of a new text, and I have tried to conform 

 as far as possible with Dr. Ash's system, using 

 Lundstrom 's edition for those books which he has 

 edited and attempting a new text for Books V, VIII, 

 IX and XII. For this purpose I have been fortunate, 

 through the good offices of Professor L. A. Post, in 

 obtaining from America photostats of the four most 



