l'on sait que la terre natale est chere a ceux meme qui
l'habitent en esclaves."

One might assume that this eloquent and comfortable essay on
contentment in slavery had been written to illustrate Varro's text
at this point, but, as a matter of fact, it is Buffon's observation
(VIII, 460) on the domestication of wild ducks!]

[Footnote 76: Saserna's rule would be the equivalent of one hand to
every five acres cultivated. With slave labour, certainly with negro
slave labour, the experience of American cotton planters in the
nineteenth century very nearly confirmed this requirement, but one of
the economic advantages of the abolition of slavery is illustrated by
this very point. In Latimer's _First Sermon before King Edward VI_,
animadverting on the advance in farm rents in his day, he says that
his father, a typical substantial English yeoman of the time of the
discovery of America, was able to employ profitably six labourers in
cultivating 120 acres, or, say, one hand for each twenty acres, which
was precisely what Arthur Young recommended as necessary for high
farming at the end of the eighteenth century. At the beginning of the
twentieth century the American farmer seldom employs more than one
hand for every eighty acres cultivated, but this is partly due to the
use of improved machinery and partly to the fact that his land is not
thoroughly cultivated.]

[Footnote 77: This example of Roman cost accounting is matched by
Walter of Henley in thirteenth century England.

"Some men will tell you that a plough cannot work eight score or nine
score acres yearly, but I will show you that it can. You know well
that a furlong ought to be forty perches long and four wide, and the
King's perch is sixteen feet and a half: then an acre is sixty-six
feet in width. Now in ploughing go thirty-six times round to make
the ridge narrower, and when the acre is ploughed then you have made
seventy-two furlongs, which are six leagues, for be it known that
twelve furlongs are a league. And the horse or ox must be very poor
that cannot from the morning go easily in pace three leagues in length
from his starting place and return by three o'clock. And I will show
you by another reason that it can do as much. You know that there are
in the year fifty-two weeks. Now take away eight weeks for holy days
and other hindrances, then are there forty-four working weeks left.
And in all that time the plough shall only have to plough for fallow
or f