Part 24 (1/2)
Varro's statement that at Byzacium in Africa wheat yielded 100 for one, which Pliny (_II.N._ XVIII, 23) increases to 150 for one, means from 175 to 260 bushels per acre, seems incredible to us, but is confirmed by the testimony of agricultural practice in Palestine.
Isaac claimed to reap an hundred fold, and the parable of the Sower alludes to yields of 30, 60 and 100 fold.
Harte _Essays on Husbandry_, 91, says that the average yield in England in the middle of the eighteenth century was seven for one, though he records the case of an award by the Dublin Society in 1763 to an Irish gentleman who raised 50 bushels of wheat from a single peck of seed! Harte was a parson, but apparently he did not bring the same unction into his agriculture as did the Rev. Robert Herrick to the husbandry of his Devons.h.i.+re glebe, a century earlier. In Herrick's _Thanksgiving to G.o.d for his House_ he sings:
”Lord, 'tis thy plenty dropping hand That soils my land And giv'st me for my bushel sown Twice ten for one.
Thou makst my teeming hen to lay Her egg each day: Besides my healthful ewes to bear Me twins each year.”]
[Footnote 96: As the Gallic header here described by Varro is the direct ancestor of our modern marvellous self-binding harvester, it is of interest to rehea.r.s.e the other ancient references to it.
Pliny (_H. N_. XVIII, 72) says:
”In the vast domains of the provinces of Gaul a large hollow frame armed with teeth and supported on two wheels is driven through the standing corn, the beasts being yoked behind it, the result being that the ears are torn off and fall within the frame.” Palladius (VII, 2) goes more into detail:
”The people of the more level regions of Gaul have devised a method of harvesting quickly and with a minimum of human labour, for thereby a single ox is made to bear the burden of the entire harvest. A cart is constructed on two low wheels and is furnished with a square body, of which the side boards are adjusted to slope upward and outward to make greater capacity. The front of the body is left open and there across the width of the cart are set a series of lance shaped teeth s.p.a.ced to the distance between the grain stalks and curved upward. Behind the cart two short shafts are fas.h.i.+oned, like those of a litter, where the ox is yoked and harnessed with his head towards the cart: for this purpose it is well to use a well broken and sensible ox, which will not push ahead of his driver. When this machine is driven through the standing grain all the heads are stripped by the teeth and are thrown back and collected in the body of the cart, the straw being left standing. The machine is so contrived that the driver can adjust its height to that of the grain. Thus with little going and coming and in a few short hours the entire harvest is made. This method is available in level or prairie countries and to those who do not need to save the straw.”
That ingenious Dutchman Conrad Heresbach refers, in his _Husbandry_, to Palladius' description of the Gallic header with small respect, which indicates that in the sixteenth century it was no longer in use.
I quote from Barnaby Googe's translation of Heresbach (the book which served Izaak Walton as the model for his _Compleat Angler_): ”This tricke might be used in levell and champion countries, but with us it would make but ill-favoured worke.”
Dondlinger, in his excellent _Book of Wheat_ (1908), which should be in the hands of every grain farmer, gives a picture reproducing the Gallic header and says:
”After being used during hundreds of years the Gallic header disappeared, and it seems to have been completely forgotten for several centuries. Only through literature did it escape the fate of permanent oblivion and become a heritage for the modern world. The published description of the machine by Pliny and Palladius furnished the impulse in which modern harvesting inventions originated. Its distinctive features are retained in several modern inventions of this cla.s.s, machines which have a practical use and value under conditions similar to those which existed on the plains of Gaul. Toward the close of the eighteenth century, the social, economic and agricultural conditions in England, on account of increasing compet.i.tion and the higher value of labour, were ripe for the movement of invention that was heralded by the printed account of the Gallic header. The first header was constructed by William Pitt in 1786. It was an attempted improvement on the ancient machine in that the stripping teeth were placed in a cylinder which was revolved by power transmitted from the wheels. This 'rippling cylinder' carried the heads of the wheat into the box of the machine, and gradually evolved into the present day reel.”
It may be added that the William Pitt mentioned was not the statesman, but a contemporary agricultural writer of the same name.]
[Footnote 97: According to Sir Anthony Fitzherbert it was the custom in England to shear wheat and rye and to leave the straw standing after the third method described by Varro, the purpose being to preserve the straw to be cut later for thatching, as thres.h.i.+ng it would necessarily destroy its value for thatching. It was the custom in England, however, to mow barley and oats.]
[Footnote 98: Pliny advises that the grain which collects on the circ.u.mference of a thres.h.i.+ng floor of this description be saved for seed because it is evidently the heaviest.]
[Footnote 99: In the Apennines today the thres.h.i.+ng floor, or _aja_, is anointed with cow dung smeared smooth with water, doubtless for the same reason that the Romans so used amurca.]
[Footnote 100: Between harvests the winnowing basket is quite generally used in Italy today for a cradle, as it was from the beginning of time, for there is an ancient gem representing the infant Bacchus asleep in a winnowing basket.]
[Footnote 101: What the French call, from the same practice, _vin de rognure_.]
[Footnote 102: Varro does not mention the season of the olive harvest, but Virgil tells us (G. II, 519) that in their day as now it was winter. Cato (XX-XXII) described the construction and operation of the _trapetus_ in detail. 'It can still be seen in operation in Italy, turned by a patient donkey and flowing with the new oil of an intense blue-green colour. It is always flanked by an array of vast storage jars (Cato's _dolii_ now called _orci_), which make one realize the story of _Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves_.]
[Footnote 103: The Roman waste of amurca, through ignorance of its value, was like the American waste of the cotton seed, which for many years was thrown out from the gin to rot upon the ground, even its fertilizing use being neglected. Now cotton seed has a market value equivalent to nearly 20 per cent of that of the staple. It is used for cattle feed and also is made into lard and ”pure olive oil,” being exported in bulk and imported again in bottles with Italian labels.]
[Footnote 104: Cf. Fowler, _Social Life at Rome in the Age of Cicero_.
”Let us consider that in a large city today the person and property of all, rich or poor, are adequately protected by a sound system of police and by courts of first instance which are sitting every day.
a.s.sault and murder, theft and burglary are exceptional. It might be going too far to say that at Rome they were the rule: but it is the fact that in what we may call the slums of Rome there was no machinery for checking them.... It is the great merit of Augustus that he made Rome not only a city of marble but one in which the persons and property of all citizens were fairly secure.”
There are several contemporary references to the crowded and dangerous condition of the streets of Rome at the end of the Republic. Cicero (_Plancius_, 7) tells how he was pushed against the arch of Fabius while struggling through the press of the Via Sacra, and exonerates from blame the man who was the immediate cause of his inconvenience, holding that the one next beyond was more responsible: in which judgment Cicero was of the opinion of Mr. Justice Blackstone in the famous leading case of Scott _v_. Shepherd (1 _Smith's L.C._, 480), where the question was who was liable for the damage eventually done by the burning squib which was pa.s.sed about the market house by successive hands. The majority of the court held, however, against Blackstone and Cicero, and established the doctrine of proximate cause.]
[Footnote 105: The Roman week (_nundinum_, or more properly _inter nundinum_) was of eight days, the last being the market day on which the citizens rested from agricultural labour and came into town to sell and buy and talk politics. Cf. Pliny, XVIII, 3. This custom which Varro regrets had fallen into desuetude so far as Rome was concerned was in his day still practised in the provinces. Thus the five tenants on Horace's Sabine farm were wont to go every _nundinum_ to the market town of Varia (the modern Vicovaro) to transact public business (_Epist_. I, 14, 2).]
[Footnote 106: Varro here refers to the great economic change which was coming over Italian husbandry in the last days of the Republic, the disappearance of the small farms, the ”septem jugera” which nurtured the early Roman heroes like Cincinnatus and Dentatus, and even the larger, but still comparatively small, farms which Cato describes, and the development of the _latifundia_ given over to grazing.]
[Footnote 107: The tradition is, says Pliny, that King Augeas was the first in Greece to use manure, and that Hercules introduced the practice into Italy. To the wise farmer the myth of the Augean stables is the genesis of good agriculture.]