“You shall have it,” said Axius, “both today, and hereafter as well, off those delicacies you will teach me to rear.”

“I fear,” replied Merula, “that what you may offer me at the beginning of your experience with villa feeding will be dead geese or deceased pea-cocks.”

“And what difference will it make to you,” retorted Axius, “if I do serve you fish or fowl which has come to an untimely end:  for in no event could you eat them unless they were dead:  but I beg you,” he added, “matriculate me in the school of villa husbandry and expound to me the theory and the practice of it.”

Merula accepted the invitation cheerfully.

Of the Roman development of the industries of the steading

III.  “In the first place,” he said, “you should know what kind of creatures you may raise or feed in or about a villa, either for your profit or for your pleasure.  There are three divisions for this study:  poultry houses, warrens and fish ponds.

“I include under the head of poultry houses the feeding of all kinds of fowls which are usually kept within the walls of a steading:  under the head of warrens not merely what our great grandfathers meant—­places where rabbits were usually kept—­but any enclosure adjoining a villa in which game animals are enclosed to be fed.  In like manner I include under the head of fish ponds all those places in which fish are kept at a villa either in fresh or salt water.

“Each of these divisions may be separated into at least two parts:  thus the first, that with respect to poultry houses, should be treated with reference to a classification of fowls as between those which are content on land alone, such as pea-cocks, turtle doves, thrushes; and those which require access to water as well as land, such as geese, widgeons and ducks.  So the second division, that relating to game, has two different classifications:  one which includes the wild boar, the roe buck and hares; the other bees, snails and dormice.

“The third, or aquatic division, likewise has two classifications, one including fresh water fish, the other salt water fish.

“In order to secure and maintain a supply of these six classes of stock it is necessary to provide a force of three kinds of artificers, namely:  fowlers, hunters and fishermen, or else you may buy breeding stock from such men, and trust to the diligence of your servants to rear and fatten their offspring until they are ready for market.  Certain of them, such as dormice, snails and chickens, may, however, be obtained without the aid of a hunter’s net, and doubtless the business of keeping them began with the stock native to every farm:  for the breeding even of chickens has not been a monopoly of the Roman augurs, to make provision for their auspices, but has been practised by all farmers from the beginning of time.[166] From such a start in the kind of husbandry we are now discussing, the next step was to provide masonry enclosures near the steading to confine game, and these served as well for shelter for the bee-stand, for originally the bees were wont to make their hives under the eaves of the farm house itself.