We learn some details of early agricultural life in Babylonia from the fragments of an old Sumerian work on farming which formed one of the text-books in the Babylonian schools. Passages were extracted from it and translated into Semitic for the use of the students, and difficult words and expressions were noted and explained. The book seems to have resembled the “Works and Days” of the Greek poet Hesiod, except that it was not in verse. We gather from it that the agricultural year began, not with Nisan, or March, but with Tisri, or September, like the Jewish civil year; at all events, it was then that the tenure of the farmer began and that his contract was drawn up with the landlord. It was then, too, after the harvest, that he took possession of the land, paying his tax to the government, repairing or making the fences, and ploughing the soil. His tenure was of various kinds. Sometimes he undertook to farm the land, paying half the produce of it to the landlord or his agent and providing the farming implements, the seeds, and the manure himself. Sometimes the farm was worked on a co-operative system, the owner of the land and the tenant-farmer entering into partnership with one another and dividing everything into equal shares. In this case the landlord was required to furnish carts, oxen, and seeds. At other times the tenant received only a percentage of the profits—a third, a fourth, a fifth, or a tenth, according to agreement. He had also to pay the _esrâ_ or tithe. The most common form of tenure seems to have been that in which a third of the produce went to the lessor. Two-thirds of the rent, paid either in dates or in their monetary equivalent, was delivered to the landlord on the last day of the eighth month, Marchesvan, where the dates had been gathered and had been laid out to dry. By the terms of the lease the tenant was called upon to keep the farm buildings in order, and even to erect them if they did not exist. His own house was separate from that in which the farm-servants lived, and it was surrounded by a garden, planted for the most part with date-palms. If the farm-buildings were not built or were not kept in proper repair a fine was imposed upon him, which in the case quoted by the writer of the agricultural work was 10 shekels, or 30s. The tenant was furthermore expected to pay the laborers their wages, and the landlord had the power of dismissing him if the terms of the contract were not fulfilled.