[Footnote 89:  Modern agricultural chemistry has contradicted this judgment of Cassius, for the manure of sea birds, especially that brought from the South American islands in the Pacific, known commercially as Peruvian guano, is found on analysis to be high in the elements which are most beneficial to plant life.]

[Footnote 90:  Seed selection, which is now preached so earnestly by the Agricultural Department of the United States as one of the things necessary to increase the yield of wheat and corn, has ever been good practice.  Following Varro Virgil (Georgic I, 197) insists upon it:  “I have seen those seeds on whose selection much time and labour had been spent, nevertheless degenerate if men did not every year rigorously separate by hand all the largest specimens.”]

[Footnote 91:  Cicero (de Div.  II, 24) records a mot of Cato’s that he wondered that an haruspex did not laugh when he saw another—­“qui mirari se aiebat, quod non rideret aruspex, aruspicem quum vidisset.”]

[Footnote 92:  This process of propagation which Varro describes as “new” is still practised by curious orchardists under the name “inarching.”  The free end of a growing twig is introduced into a limb of its own tree, back of a specimen fruit, thus pushing its development by means of the supplemental feeding so provided.  Cf.  Cyc.  Am.  Hort.  II, 664.]

[Footnote 93:  Alfalfa is the Moorish name which the Spaniards brought to America with the forage plant Medicago Sativa, Linn., which all over Southern Europe is known by the French name lucerne.  It is proper to honour the Moors by continuing in use their name for this interesting plant, because undoubtedly they preserved it for the use of the modern world, just as undoubtedly they bequeathed to us that fine sentiment known as personal honour.

Alfalfa was one of the standbys of ancient agriculture.  According to Pliny, it was introduced into Italy from Greece, whence it had been brought from Asia during the Persian wars, and so derived its Greek and Roman name Medica.  As Cato does not mention it with the other legumes he used, it is probable that the Romans had not yet adopted it in Cato’s day, but by the time of Varro and Virgil it was well established in Italy.  In Columella’s day it was already a feature of the agriculture of Andalousia, and there the Moors, who loved plants, kept it alive, as it were a Vestal fire, while it died out of Italy during the Dark Ages:  from Spain it spread again all over Southern Europe, and with America it was a fair exchange for tobacco.  Alfalfa has always been the subject of high praise wherever it has been known.  The Greek Amphilochus devoted a whole book to it, as have the English Walter Harte in the middle of the eighteenth century and the American Coburn at the beginning of the twentieth century, but none of them is more instructive on the subject of its culture than is Columella in a few paragraphs.  Because of the difficulty of getting a stand of it in many soils, it is important to realize the pains which the Romans took with the seed bed, for it is on this point that most American farmers fail.  Says Columella (II, 10):