[Footnote 63:  This sounds like the boast of the modern proprietor of an old blue grass sod in Northern Virginia or Kentucky.  On the general question of pasture vs. arable land, cf.  Hartlib’s Legacie:  “It is a misfortune that pasture lands are not more improved.  England abounds in pasturage more than any other country, and is, therefore, richer.  In France, acre for acre, the land is not comparable to ours:  and, therefore, Fortescue, chancellor to Henry VI, observes that we get more in England by standing still (alluding to our meadows) than the French do by working (that is, cultivating their vineyards and corn lands).”

We may permit Montesquieu (Esprit des Lois II, 23, 14) to voice the French side of this question.  “Les pais de paturage sont pen peuples.  Les terres a bled occupent plus d’hommes et les vignobles infiniment d’avantage.  En Angleterre on s’est souvent plaint que l’augmentation des paturage diminuoit les habitans.”

In the introduction to his Book Two (post, p. 179) Varro states the sound conclusion, that the two kinds of husbandry should be combined on the same land.  Sir Anthony Fitzherbert knew this:  “An housbande can not well thryue by his corne without he haue other cattell, nor by his cattell without corne.  For els he shall be a byer, a borrower or a beggar.”]

[Footnote 64:  This is the explanation of why Aesop’s fox found the grapes to be sour which grew on a trellis, for he had expected to find them of easy access on the ground.  Aesop was a Phrygian, and, while Bentley has proved that Aesop never wrote the existing fables which go by that name, yet it is recognized that they are of Oriental origin and it is evident that that of the Fox and the Grapes came out of Asia, where, as Varro says, the grapes were usually allowed to grow on the ground.]

[Footnote 65:  One is tempted to include here Pliny’s observations upon the tests of good soil if only for the sake of his description of one of the sweetest sensations of the farmer every where, the aroma of new ploughed fertile land:—­

“Those unguents which have a taste of earth are better,” says Cicero, “than those which smack of saffron,” it seeming to him more to the purpose to express himself by the word taste than smell.  And such is the fact no doubt, that soil is the best which has the savour of a perfume.  If the question should be put to us, what is this odour of the earth that is held in such estimation; our answer is that it is the same that is often to be recognized at the moment of sunset without the necessity even of turning up the ground, at the spots where the extremities of the rainbow have been observed to meet the earth:  as also, when after long continued drought, the rain has soaked the ground.  Then it is that the earth exhales the divine odour that is so peculiarly its own, and to which, imparted to it by the sun, there is no perfume however sweet that can possibly be compared.  It is this odour which the earth, when turned up, ought to emit, and which, when once found, can never deceive any person:  and this will be found the best criterion for judging of the quality of the soil.  Such, too, is the odour that is usually perceived in land newly cleared when an ancient forest has been just cut down; its excellence is a thing that is universally admitted.]