re of his fishes, for he pierced
a mountain at Naples, and so contrived that the sea water in his fish
ponds should be renewed by the action of the tides. Furthermore, he
has arranged that his beloved fishes may be driven into a cool place
during the heat of the day, just as the Apulian shepherds do when they
drive their flocks along the drift ways to the Sabine mountains: for
so great was his ardour for the welfare of his fishes that he gave a
commission to his architect to drive at his sole cost a tunnel from
his fish ponds at Raise to the sea, and by throwing out a mole
contrived that the tide should flow in and out of his fish ponds twice
a day, from moon to moon, and so cool them off."

At this moment, while we were talking, there was a sound of foot steps
on the right and our candidate came into the _villa publica_ arrayed
in the broad purple of his new rank as an aedile. We went to meet him
and, after congratulations, escorted him to the Capitol, whence he
departed for his home and we to ours.

So there, my dear Pinnius, is the brief record of our discourse on the
husbandry of the steading.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: "The manner in which the ancients managed their fallow
is certainly most worthy of our attention: their care in ploughing,
according to the situation of the land, and nature of the climate, and
their manner of adapting the kind of ploughing to answer the purposes
intended by the operation, are also most worthy of our imitation.
Their exactness in these things exceeds any thing of the kind found
amongst the moderns, and is even beyond what any practical writer on
agriculture has proposed. This is an evidence that tillage is not even
in this age brought to that perfection of which it is capable: and
that, notwithstanding all the improvements lately introduced, we may
yet receive some instruction from a proper attention to the precepts
and practices of the ancients. I am desirous to add that this
attention may be useful by preventing improvers from running into
every specious scheme of agriculture produced by a lively imagination
and engaging them to study the great variety of soils and even
climates in this island, and to be careful in adapting to these their
several operations." Dickson _Husbandry of the Ancients_, XXIII.

The Rev. Andrew Dickson, who died in 1776, was minister of Aberlady in
the county of East Lothian, the son of a progressive and successful
Scots farmer, and had experienc