The unalloyed pleasure, however, with which Mrs. Teak regarded the efforts of her husband to put under cultivation land that had lain fallow for twenty years convinced both men that they were on a wrong scent.

The tool of the artisan is not like the peasant's plot of ground, which is more productive after having lain fallow.

The soil having lain fallow for centuries, and being rich in humus, had produced more sugar cane than he could grind.

With might and main their fallows let them till: Till comes the seedtime, and cicalas trill (Hid from the toilers of the hot midday In the thick leafage) on the topmost spray!

FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: "The manner in which the ancients managed their fallow is certainly most worthy of our attention: their care in ploughing, according to the situation of the land, and nature of the climate, and their manner of adapting the kind of ploughing to answer the purposes intended by the operation, are also most worthy of our imitation.

There came a farmer's son a-wooing to her, A proper man: well-landed too he was, A man that for his wit need not to ask What time a year 'twere good to sow his oats, Nor yet his barley; no, nor when to reap, To plough his fallows, or to fell his trees, Well-experienc'd thus each kind of way; After a two months' labour at the most And yet 'twas well he held it out so long

They are as the implements which cleave and break up the idle fallow, and without their work there can be no prodigal or generous sowing.

He should practise fallow and rotation (G. I, 71: R.R. I, 44, 2), and compensate the land by planting legumes (G. I, 74: R.R. I, 23); he should irrigate his meadows in summer (G. I, 104: R.R. I, 31, 5), and drain off surface water in winter (G. I, 113: R.R. I, 36).