|
Home | Prev
| Next
| Contents
(II.P. 9, I) had recorded what the agricultural colleges teach
today--that beans are valuable for this purpose because they rot
readily, and, he adds, in Macedonia and Thessaly it has always been
the custom to turn them under when they bloom.]
[Footnote 82: Although Varro advises the first ploughing in the spring,
the ancients were not unmindful of the advantages of winter ploughing
of stiff and heavy clay. Theophrastus, who died in B.C. 287, advises
it "that the earth may feel the cold." Indeed, he was fully alive to
the reasons urged by the modern professors of agronomy for intensive
cultivation. "For the soil," he says (C.P. III, 25), "often inverted
becomes free, light and clear of weeds, so that it can most easily
afford nourishment."
King Solomon gives the same advice, "The sluggard will not plough
by reason of the winter, therefore shall he begin harvest and have
nothing." Proverbs, XX, 4.]
[Footnote 83: The Romans understood the advantages of thorough
cultivation of the soil. As appears from the text, they habitually
broke up a sod in the spring, ploughed it again at midsummer, and once
more in September before seeding. Pliny prescribes that the first
ploughing should be nine inches deep, and says that the Etruscans some
times ploughed their stiff clay as many as nine times. The accepted
Roman reason for this was the eradication of weeds, but it also
accomplished in some measure the purpose of "dry farming"--the
conservation of the moisture content of the soil, as that had
been practised for countless generations in the sandy Valley of
Mesopotamia. Varro makes no exception to this rule, but Virgil was
here, as in other instances, induced to depart from Varro's wisdom,
with the result that he imposed upon Roman agriculture several
thoroughly bad practices. Thus, while he applies Varro ploughing rules
to rich land and bids the farmer "exercetque frequens tellurem atque
imperat arvis," he says (Geo. I, 62) that it will suffice to give
sandy land a single shallow ploughing in September immediately before
seeding, for fear, forsooth, that the summer suns will evaporate
whatever moisture there is in it! Again, Virgil recommends, what Varro
does not, cross-ploughing and burning the stubble and Virgil's advice
was generally followed.
In William Benson's edition (1725) of the Georgics "with notes
critical and rustick," it is stated that "the husbandry of England
in general is Virgilian, which is shown by paring and burning the
surface: by raftering and cross-ploughing, and that in those parts of
England where the Romans principally inhabited all along the Southern
coast Latin words remain to this hour among shepherds and ploughmen in
their rustick affairs: and what will seem more strange at first sight
to affirm though in fact really true, there is more of Virgil's
husbandry put in practice in England at this instant than in Italy
itself." That this was the fact in the thirteenth century is clear
from the quotations we have made from Walter of Henley's Dite de
Hosebondrie. Cf. also Sir Anthony Fitzherbert and the account of the
manorial system of farming in England in Prothero's English Farming
Past and Present.
It remained for Jethro Tull of the Horseshoeing Husbandry to unloose
in England the long spell of the magic of Virgil's poetry upon
practical agriculture.]
[Footnote 84: The Julian calendar, which took effect on January 1, B.C.
45, had been in use only eight years when Varro was writing.]
[Footnote 85: Schneider and others have attempted to emend the
enumeration of the days in this succession of seasons, but Keil
justly observes: "As we do not know what principle Varro followed in
establishing these divisions of the year, it is safer to set them
down as they are written in the codex than to be tempted by uncertain
emendation." I have accordingly followed Keil here.]
[Footnote 86: The practice of ridging land seeded to grain was
necessary before the invention of the modern drill. Dickson, in his
Husbandry of the Ancients, XXIV, argues that, while wasteful of
land, it had the advantage of preventing the grain from lodging.
Walter of Henley, who followed the Roman methods by tradition without
knowing it, advises with them that to be successful in this kind of
seeding the furrow at the last ploughing of the fallow should be so
narrow as to be indistinguishable. "At sowing do not plough large
furrows," he says, "but little and well laid together that the seed
may fall evenly: if you plough a large furrow to be quick you will do
harm. How? I will tell you. When, the ground is sown then the harrow
will come and pull the corn into the hollow which is between the two
ridges and the large ridge shall be uncovered, then no corn shall grow
there. And will you see this? When the corn is above ground go to the
end of the ridge and you will see that I tell you truly. And if the
land must be sown below the ridge see that it is ploughed with small
furrows and the earth raised as much as you are able. And see that the
ridge which is between the two furrows is narrow. And let the earth,
which lies like a crest in the furrow under the left foot after the
plough, be over-turned, and then shall the furrow be narrow enough."]
[Footnote 87: Farrago was a mixture of refuse far, or spelt, with
vetch, sown thick and cut green to be fed to cattle in the process
now called soiling. The English word "forage" comes from this Latin
original.]
[Footnote 88: Spanish American engineers today insert in their
specifications for lumber the stipulation that it be cut on the wane
of the moon. The rural confidence in the influence of the moon upon
the life of a farm still persists vigorously: thus as Pliny (H.N.
Prev
| Next
| Contents
|