and rough stones.  If the olives are left too long in the heap they heat and spoil and the oil is rancid, so if you are unable to grind promptly the heaps of olives should be ventilated by moving them.  The yield of the olive is of two kinds, oil which is well known and amurca, of the use of which many are so ignorant that one can often see it streaming from the mill and wasting upon the ground where it not only discolours the soil, but in places where it collects even makes it sterile:  while if applied intelligently it has many uses of the greatest importance to agriculture, as, for instance, by pouring it around the roots of trees, chiefly the olive itself, or wherever it is desired to destroy weeds.[103]

5 deg.  HOUSING TIME

LVI.  “Up to this moment,” cried Agrius, “I have been sitting in the barn with the keys in my hands waiting for you, Stolo, to bring in the harvest.”

“Lo, I am here at the threshold,” replied Stolo.  “Open the gates for me.”

Of storing hay

In the first place, it is better to house your hay than to leave it stacked in the field, for thus it makes more palatable provender, as may be proven by putting both kinds before the cattle.

Of storing grain

LVII.  But corn should be stored in an elevated granary, exposed to the winds from the east and the north, and where no damp air may reach it from places near at hand.  The walls and the floors should be plastered with a stucco of marble dust or at least with a mixture of clay and chaff and amurca, for amurca will serve to keep out mice and weevil and will make the grain solid and heavy.  Some men even sprinkle their grain with amurca in the proportion of a quadrantal to every thousand modii of grain:  others crumble or scatter over it, for the same purpose, other vermifuges like Chalcidian or Carian chalk or wormwood, and other things of that kind.  Some farmers have their granaries under ground, like caverns, which they call silos, as in Cappadocia and Thrace, while in hither Spain, in the vicinity of Carthage, and at Osca pits are used for this purpose, the bottoms of which are covered with straw:  and they take care that neither moisture nor air has access to them, except when they are opened for use, a wise precaution because where the air does not move the weevil will not hatch.  Corn stored in this way is preserved for fifty years, and millet, indeed, for more than a century.

On the ether hand again, in hither Spain and in certain parts of Apulia they build elevated granaries above ground, which the winds keep cool, not only by windows at the sides but also from underneath the floor.

Of storing legumes

LVIII.  Beans and other legumes keep safe a long time in oil jars covered with ashes.  Cato says the little Aminnean grape, as well as the large variety and that called Apician, keep very well when buried in earthen pots:  or they may be preserved quite as well in boiled new wine, or in fresh after-wine.  The varieties which keep best when hung up are the hard grapes and those known as the Aminnean Scantian.