tween farmers and
shepherds. It is certain that the latter, in the attempt to find pasture
for the flocks, often allowed their sheep to feed off the farmers' fields
in the spring. This practice the code set itself to prevent by fixing a
scale of compensation to be paid by any shepherd who caused his sheep to
graze on cultivated land without the owner's consent. If the offence was
committed in the early spring, when the crop was still small, the farmer
was to harvest the crop and receive a considerable price in kind as
compensation for the shepherd. But if it occurred later on in the
spring, when the sheep had been brought in from the meadows and turned
into the great common field at the city gate, the offence would less
probably be due to accident and the damage to the crop would be greater.
In these circumstances the shepherd had to take over the crop and pay
the farmer very heavily for his loss.

[Illustration: 288.jpg Portrait-sculpture of Hammurabi, King of Babylon]

From a stone slab in the British Museum.

The planting of gardens and orchards was encouraged, and a man was
allowed to use a field for this purpose without paying a yearly rent. He
might plant it and tend it for four years, and in the fifth year of
his tenancy the original owner of the field took half of the garden
in payment, while the other half the planter of the garden kept for
himself. If a bare patch had been left in the garden it was to be
reckoned in the planter's half. Regulations were framed to ensure the
proper carrying out of the planting, for if the tenant neglected to do
this during the first four years, he was still liable to plant the plot
he had taken without receiving his half, and he had to pay the owner
compensation in addition, which varied in amount according to the
original condition of the land. If a man hired a garden, the rent he
paid to the owner was fixed at two-thirds of its produce. Detailed
regulations are also given in the code concerning the hire of cattle
and asses, and the compensation to be paid to the owner for the loss or
ill-treatment of his beasts. These are framed on the just principle that
the hirer was responsible only for damage or loss which he could have
reasonably prevented. Thus, if a lion killed a hired ox or ass in the
open country, or if an ox was killed by lightning, the loss fell upon
the owner and not on the man who hired the beast. But if the hirer
killed the ox through carelessness or by be