pointed teeth, crushed the ears: Varro calls this machine the “Carthaginian chariot.”[I_43] Strabo asserts that the ancient Britons carried the corn into a large covered area, or barn, where they thrashed it; adding that, without this precaution, the rain and damp would have spoiled the grain.[I_44] At all events, this kind of thrashing in barns, with flails and sticks, was not unknown to other countries; Pliny speaks of it,[I_45] and Columella describes it;[I_46] we may add that the Egyptians were also very probably acquainted with this method, since the Jews, who had submitted to their power, employed it themselves.[I_47] When the corn had been thrashed, winnowed, and put into baskets very similar to our own of the present day,[I_48] they immediately studied the best means of preserving it: some preferred granaries exposed to a mild temperature, others had extensive edifices with thick brick walls without openings, except one hole only, in the roof, to admit light and air.
The Spaniards, Africans, and Cappadocians, dug deep ditches, from which they excluded all moisture; they covered the bottom and lined the sides with straw, then put in the grain, and covered it up. The ancients were of opinion that corn in the ear could, by this means, be preserved a great number of years.[I_49]
If it is desirable to keep corn for any length of time, choose the finest and best grown. After having worked it, make a pile as high as the ceiling will permit. Cover with a layer of quicklime, powdered, of about three inches thick; then, with a watering-pot, moisten this lime, which forms a crust with the corn. The outside seeds bud, and shoot forth a stalk, which perishes in winter. This corn is only to be touched when necessity requires it. At Sedan, a warehouse has been seen, hewed out of the rock and tolerably damp, in which there had been a considerable pile of corn for the last hundred and ten years. It was covered with a crust a foot thick, on which persons might walk without bending or breaking it in the slightest degree.
Marshal Vauban proposed eating corn in soup, without being ground; it was boiled during two or three hours in water, and when the grains had burst, a little salt, butter, or milk, was added. This food is very nice, not unwholesome, and might be employed when flour is scarce, heated, or half-rotten.—Dutour.
The Chinese instituted a ceremony which had for its base to honour the profession of agriculture: every year, at the time of ploughing the fields, the emperor with all his court paid a visit to his country residence near Pekin, and then marked out several furrows with his plough.
In 1793, the National Convention of France instituted also a similar fête; and the president of the local administration of his county was to mark out a furrow.
In 1848 a grand republican procession took place through Paris, to the Champ de Mars, wherein agriculture played a prominent part.
The first treatise on agriculture was printed in 1538; and its importance has been so much felt from that period, that there are now in France more than one hundred and twenty societies of agriculture, who distribute prizes to encourage discoveries for the improvement of this science.