ch as possible as relishes for
the hands. Later set aside such of the ripe olives as will make the
least oil. Be careful to make them go as far as possible. When the
olives are all eaten, give them fish pickles and vinegar. One peck of
salt per annum is enough for each hand.

(LIX) Allow each hand a smock and a cloak every other year. As often
as you give out a smock or cloak to any one take up the old one, so
that caps can be made out of it. A pair of heavy wooden shoes should
be allowed every other year.

_Of draining_

(XLIII) If the land is wet, it should be drained with trough shaped
ditches dug three feet wide at the surface and one foot at the bottom
and four feet deep. Blind these ditches with rock. If you have no rock
then fill them with green willow poles braced crosswise. If you have
no poles, fill then with faggots. Then dig lateral trenches three feet
deep and four feet wide in such way that the water will flow from the
trenches into the ditches.

(CLV) In the winter surface water should be drained off the fields.
On hillsides courses should be kept clear for the water to flow off.
During the rainy season at the beginning of Autumn is the greatest
risk from water. When it begins to rain all the hands should go out
with picks and shovels and clear out the drains so that the water may
flow off into the roads, and the crops be protected.

_Of preparing the seed bed_

(LXI) What is the first principle of good agriculture? To plough well.
What is the second? To plough again; and the third is to manure. When
you plough corn land, plough well and in good weather, lest you turn
a cloddy furrow. The other things of good agriculture are to sow seed
plentifully, to thin the young sprouts, and to hill up the roots with
earth.

(V) Never plough rotten land[30] nor drive flocks or carts across it.

If care is not taken about this, the land so abused will be barren for
three years.

_Of manure_

(V) Plan to have a big compost heap and take the best of care of the
manure. When it is hauled out see that it is well rotted and spread.
The Autumn is the time to do this.

(XXXVII) You can make manure of litter, lupine straw, chaff, bean
stalks, husks and the leaves of ilex and of oak.[31]

(XXX) Fold your sheep on the land which you are about to seed, and
there feed them leaves.[32]

_Of soil improvement_

(XXXVII) The things which are harmful to corn land are to plough the
ground when it is rotten,