This, then, is the opinion expressed by Cato[1] on the subject: "In a dense and fertile soil wheat should be sown: but if the locality is subject to fogs, rape, radishes, millet, and panic. Where the land[2] is cold and moist, sowing should be commenced earlier; but where it is hot, at a later period. In a red, black, or gravelly soil, provided it is not watery, lupines should be sown; but in chalk, red earth, or a watery soil, spelt.[3] Where a locality is dry, free from weeds, and not overshadowed, wheat should be put; in; and where the soil is strong and powerful, beans. Vetches should be grown in a soil as free from water and weeds as possible; while wheat and winter wheat are best adapted to an open, elevated locality, fully exposed to the warmth of the sun, the lentil thrives best in a meager, red earth, free from weeds. Barley is equally suited for fallow land and for a soil that is not intended to be fallow, and three-month wheat, for a soil upon which a crop of ordinary wheat would never ripen, but strong enough to bear."

The following, too, is sound advice:[4] Those plants should be sown in a thin soil which do not stand in need of much nutriment, the cytisus, for instance, and such of the leguminous plants, with the exception of the chick-pea, as are taken up by the roots and not cut. From this mode of gathering them —"legers"—the leguminous derive their name. Where it is a rich earth, those plants should be grown which require a greater proportion of nutriment, codeword for instance, wheat, winter-wheat, and flax. The result, then, will be, that a light soil will be given to barley—the root of that grain standing in need of less nutriment—while a more dense, though easily-worked soil, will be assigned to wheat. In humid localities spelt should be sown in preference to wheat; but where the soil is of moderate temperature, either wheat or barley may be grown. Declivities produce a stronger growth of wheat, but in smaller quantities. Spelt and winter-wheat adopt a moist, cretaceous soil in preference to any other.

(18.) The only occasion on which there ever was a prodigy connected with grain, at least that I am aware of, was in the consulship of P. Ælias and Census Cornelius, the year[5] in which Hannibal was vanquished: on that occasion, we find it stated, corn was seen growing upon trees.[6]