178.  The Vineyards.—­The fig orchard forms another great part of the farm, but more interesting to strangers are the vineyards.  Some of the grapes are growing over pointed stakes set all along the upland terraces; a portion of the vineyards, however, is on level ground.  Here a most picturesque method has been used for training the vines.  Tall and graceful trees have been set out—­elm, maple, oak, poplar.  The lower limbs of the trees have been cut away and up their trunks and around their upper branches now swing the vines in magnificent festoons.  The growing vines have sprung from tree to tree.  The warm breeze has set the rich clusters—­already turning purple or golden—­swaying above our heads.  The air is filled with brightness, greenery, and fragrance.  The effect of this “vineyard grove” is magical.

179.  Cattle, Sheep, and Goats.—­There is also room in the orchards for apples, pears, and quinces, but there is nothing distinctive about their culture.  If we are interested in cattle, however, we can spend a long time at the barns, or be guided out to the upland pasture where Hybrias’s flocks and herds are grazing.  Horses are a luxury.  They are almost never used in farm work, and for riding and cavalry service it is best to import a good courser from Thessaly; no attempt, therefore, is made to breed them here.  But despite the small demand for beef and butter a good many cattle are raised; for oxen are needed for the plowing and carting, oxhides have a steady sale, and there is a regular call for beehives for the hecatombs at the great public sacrifices.  Sheep are in greater acceptance.  Their wool is of large importance to a land which knows comparatively little of cotton.  They can live on scanty pasturage where an ox would starve.  Still more in favor are goats Their coarse hair has a thousand uses.  Their flesh and cheese are among the most staple articles in the Agora.  Sure-footed and adventurous, they scale the side of the most unpromising crags in search of herbage and can sometimes be seen perching, almost like birds, in what seem utterly inaccessible eyries.  Thanks to them the barren highlands of Attica are turned to good account,—­and between goat raising and bee culture an income can sometimes be extracted from the very summits of the mountains.  As for the numerous swine, it is enough to say that they range under Hybrias’s oak forest and fatten on acorns, although their swineherd, wrapped in a filthy sheepskin, is a far more loutish and ignoble fellow than the “divine Eumeus” glorified in the “Odyssey.”

180.  The Gardens and the Shrine.—­Did we wish to linger, we could be shown the barnyard with its noisy retinue of hens, pheasants, guinea fowl, and pigeons; and we would be asked to admire the geese, cooped up and being gorged for fattening, or the stately peacocks preening their splendors.  We would also hear sage disquisitions from the “oldest inhabitants” on the merits of fertilizers, especially