of this object: The great work of Mago was translated into Latin by Decimus Junius Silanus at the order of the Roman Senate; The elder Cato had meanwhile written his De agri cultura, a simple record in homely language of the rules observed by the old Roman landed proprietors rather than a theoretical treatise. Cato was followed by the two Saserna (father and son), and Gnaeus Tremellius Scrofa, whose works are lost. The learned Marcus Terentius Varro of Reate, when eighty years of age, composed his Rerum rusticarum libri tres, dealing with agriculture, the rearing of cattle, and the breeding of fishes. He was the first to systematize what had been written on the subject, and supplemented the labours of others by practical experience gained during his travels. In the Augustan age: Julius Hyginus wrote on farming and beekeeping, Sabinus Tiro on horticulture, and during the early Empire, Julius Graecinus and Julius Atticus on the culture of vines, and Cornelius Celsus (best known for his De Medicina) on farming. The chief work of the kind, however, is that of Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, De Arboribus and De Agricultura. About the middle of the 2nd century, the two Quinctilii, natives of Troja, wrote on the subject in Greek. It is remarkable that Columella's work exercised less influence in Rome and Italy than in southern Gaul and Spain, where agriculture became one of the principal subjects of instruction in the superior educational establishments that were springing up in those countries. One result of this was the preparation of manuals of a popular kind for use in the schools. In the 3rd century, Gargilius Martialis of Mauretania compiled a Geoponica in which medical botany and the veterinary art were included. The Opus Agriculturae of Palladius (4th century), in fourteen books, which is largely derived from Columella, is rearranged into a farmer's calendar, in which the different rural occupations are arranged in order of months. The fourteenth book (on forestry) is written in elegiacs (eighty-five couplets). The whole of Palladius and considerable fragments of Gargilius Martialis are extant. Appreciation The Romans knew of many advanced techniques such as green manuring with legumes, soiling, seed selection, the testing of soil for sourness, intensive cultivation of a fallow as well as of a crop, conservative rotation, the importance of livestock in a system of general farming, and the preservation of the chemical content of manure and