s what
they require. But the three great distinctions of quality of soil are
whether it is lean or fat, or medium. Fat soils are apparent from the
heavy growth of their vegetation, and the lean lie bare; as witness
the territory of Pupinia (in Latium), where all the foliage is meagre
and the vines look starved, where the scant straw never stools, nor
the fig tree blooms, while for the most part the trees are as covered
with moss as are the arid pastures. On the other hand, a rich soil
like that of Etruria reveals itself heavy with grain and forage crops
and its umbrageous trees are clean of moss. Soil of medium strength,
like that near Tibur, which one might say is rather hungry than
starved, repays cultivation in proportion as it takes on the quality
of rich land."

"Diophanes of Bithynia," said Stolo, "was very much to the point when he
wrote that the best indication of the suitability of soil for
cultivation can be had either from the soil itself or from what grows in
it: so one should ascertain whether it is white or black, if it is light
and friable when it is dug, whether its consistency is ashy, or too
heavy: or it can be tested by evidence that the wild growth upon it is
heavy and fruitful after its kind.[65] But proceed and tell us of your
third division, which relates to the measurement and laying out of the
farm."

_Of the units of area used in measuring land_

X. Scrofa resumed: "Every country has its own system for measuring
land. In Further Spain the unit of area is the _jugum_, in Campania
the _versus_, here in the Roman country and among the Latins it is
the _jugerum_. They call a _jugum_ the area which a pair of oxen
can plough in a day. The _versus_ is one hundred feet square: the
_jugerum_ is the area containing two square _actus_: the _actus
quadratus_ or _acnua_, as it is called by the Latins, measuring 120
feet in width and as much in length.[66] The smallest fraction of a
jugerum is called a _scripulum_ and is ten feet square. From this base
the surveyors some times call the butts of land which exceed a jugerum
_unciae_ (twelfths) or _sextantes_ (seventy seconds) or some other
such duodecimal division, for the jugerum contains 288 scripula, like
the ancient pound weight which was in use before the Punic wars. Two
jugera, which Romulus first made the headright and which thus became
the unit of inheritance, are called an _haeredium_:[67] later one
hundred haeredia were called a _centuria_, whi