[1615]. Cato, 7. Varro. i. 59. Colum. xii. 14.
[1616]. Schol. Aristoph. Eq. 755. Sibth. in Walp. Mem. ii. 61.
[1617]. Phot. ap. Brunckh. ad Aristoph. Pac. 574.
[1618]. Pallad. iii. 25.
[1619]. Pallad. iii. 25. Colum. xii. 45.
[1620]. Theoph. Hist. Plant. iv. 3. i.
CHAPTER IV.
STUDIES OF THE FARMER.
In other branches of rural economy the country gentlemen of Attica exhibited no less enthusiasm or skill. Indeed, throughout Greece, there prevailed a similar taste. Every one was eager to instruct and be instructed; and so great in consequence was the demand for treatises on husbandry, theoretical and practical, that numerous writers, the names of fifty of whom are preserved by Varro,[[1621]] made it the object of their study. Others without committing the result of their experience to writing, devoted themselves wholly to its practical improvement. They purchased waste or ill-cultivated lands, and, by investigating the nature of the soil, skilfully adapting their crops to it, manuring, irrigating, and draining, converted a comparative desert into a productive estate.[[1622]] We can possibly, as Dr. Johnson insists, improve very little our knowledge of agriculture by erudite researches into the methods of the ancients; though Milton was of opinion, that even here some useful hints might be obtained. In describing, however, what the Greeks did, I am not pretending to enlighten the present age, but to enable it to enjoy its superiority by instituting a comparison with the ruder practices of antiquity.
Already in those times the men of experience and routine,[[1623]] had begun to vent their sneers against philosophers for their profound researches into the nature of soils,[[1624]] in which, however, they by no means designed to engage the husbandman, but only to present him, in brief and intelligible maxims, with the fruit of their labours. Nevertheless the practical husbandman went to work a shorter way. He observed his neighbour’s grounds,[[1625]] saw what throve in this soil, what in the other, what was bettered by irrigation, what in this respect might safely be left to the care of Heaven; and thus, in a brief space, acquired a rough theory wherewith to commence operations. An agriculturist, the Athenians thought, required no recondite erudition, though to his complete success the exercise of much good sense and careful observation was necessary. Every man would, doubtless, know in what seasons of the year he must plough and sow and reap, that lands exhausted by cultivation must be suffered to lie fallow, that change of crops is beneficial to the soil, and so on. But the great art consists in nicely adapting each operation to the varying march of the seasons, in converting accidents to use, in rendering the winds, the showers, the sunshine, subservient to your purposes, in mastering the signs of the weather, and guarding as far as possible against the injuries sustained from storms of rain or hail.