e think best to dispose their apples in the fruitery on concrete
tables, others on beds of straw, and some even on flocks of wool.

Pomegranates are preserved by sticking their twigs in jars of sand,
quinces and sparrow apples are strung together and hung up, but the
late maturing Anician pears are best preserved in boiled must. Sorbs
and pears also are some times cut up and dried in the sun, though the
sorb may be easily preserved intact by keeping them in a dry place:
turnips are cut up and preserved in mustard, while walnuts keep well
in sand, as I have explained with respect to ripe pomegranates. There
is a similar way of ripening pomegranates: put the fruit, while it is
still green and attached to its branch, in a pot without a bottom,
bury this in the earth and scrape the soil around the protruding
branch so as to keep out the air, and when the pomegranates are dug up
they will be found to be not only intact but larger than if they had
hung all the time on the tree.

_Of storing olives_

LX. With respect to preserving olives, Cato advises that table olives,
both the round and the bitter berried kinds, keep best in brine both
when they are dry and when they are green, but if they are bruised it
is well to put them in mastich oil. Round olives will retain their
black colour if they are packed in salt for five days, and then, the
salt having been brushed away, are exposed for two days in the sun: or
they may be preserved in must boiled down to one-third, without the
use of salt.

_Of storing amurca_

LXI. Experienced farmers do well to save their amurca as they do their
oil and their wine. The method of preserving it is this: immediately
after the oil has been pressed out, draw off the amurca and boil it
down to one-third and, when it has cooled, store it in vats. There are
other methods also, as that in which must is mingled with the amurca.

6 deg. CONSUMING TIME

LXII. Since no one stores his crops except to bring them out again, it
remains to make a few observations upon the sixth and last operation
in our round of agriculture.

Crops which have been stored are brought out either to care for them,
to consume them or to sell them, and as all crops are not alike there
are different times for caring for them and for consuming them.

_Of cleaning grain_

LXIII. Grain is taken out of store to be cleaned, when the weevil
begins to damage it. When this is apparent the grain should be laid
out