Ibn-al-Awam's book has, therefore, a double interest for us, and
we are fortunate in having it available in an admirable French
translation from the Arabic by J.J. Clement-Mullet (Paris, Librairie
A. Franck, 1864). Not the least profitable chapters in this book are
those devoted to the preparation of manure in composts, to be ripened
in pits as Varro advises in the text. They show a thoroughness, a care
and an art in the mixing of the various animal dungs, with straw,
woodsearth and cinders, which few modern gardeners could equal. German
scholarship has questioned the Chaldaean origin of the authorities
quoted, but there is internal evidence which smacks of an oriental
despotism that might well be Babylonian. In a recipe for a rich
compost suitable for small garden plants, we are advised (I, 2, I, p.
95), without a quiver, to mix in blood--that of the camel or the sheep
if necessary--_but human blood is to be preferred!_]

[Footnote 70: What Varro describes as the military fence of ditch and
bank was doubtless the typical Herefordshire fence of modern England
which Arthur Young, in _The Farmers' Letters_, recommends so highly as
at once most effective and most economical. The bank is topped with a
plashed hedge of white thorn in which sallow, ash, hazel and beech are
planted for "firing." The fencing practice of the American farmer has
followed the line of least resistance and is founded on the lowest
first cost: the original "snake" fences of split rails, upon the
making of which a former generation of pioneer American boys qualified
themselves for Presidential campaigns, being followed by woven wire
"made by a trust" and not the most enduring achievement of Big
Business. The practical farmer, as well as the lover of rural scenery,
has cause for regret that American agricultural practice has not yet
had the patience to enclose the land within live hedges and ditches.]

[Footnote 71: The kind of fence which Varro here describes as "ex terra
et lapillis compositis in formis" is also described by Pliny (H.N.
XXXV, 169), as formaceos or moulded, and he adds, "aevis durant." It
would thus clearly appear to have been of gravel concrete, the use of
which the manufacturers of cement are now telling us, is the badge of
the modern progressive farmer. Cato (XXXVIII) told how to burn lime on
the farm, and these concrete fences were, of course, formed with lime
as the matrix. When only a few years ago, Portland cement was first
p