It is likewise interesting to compare them with the works of the modern Italians on husbandry, as the _Liber Ruralium Commodorum_ of Crescenzio, written about the end of the thirteenth century,—the _Coltivazione Toscana_ of Davanzati,—Vittorio’s treatise, _Degli Ulivi_,—and even Alamanni’s poem _Coltivazione_, which closely follows, particularly as to the situation and construction of a villa, the precepts of Cato, Varro, and Columella. The plough used at this day by the peasantry in the Campagna di Roma, is of the same form as that of the ancient Latian husbandmen(10); and many other points of resemblance may be discovered, on a perusal of the most recent writers on the subject of Italian cultivation(11). Dickson, too, who, in his _Husbandry of the Ancients_, gives an account of Roman agriculture so far as connected with the labours of the British farmer, has shown, that, in spite of the great difference of soil and climate, many maxims of the old Roman husbandmen, as delivered by Cato and Varro, corresponded with the agricultural system followed in his day in England. Of the distinguished Roman citizens who practised agriculture, none were more eminent than Cato and Varro; and by them the precepts of the art were also committed to writing. Their works are original compositions, founded on experience, and not on Grecian models, like so many other Latin productions. Varro, indeed, enumerates about fifty Greek authors, who, previous to his time, had written on the subject of agriculture; and Mago, the Carthaginian, composed, in the Punic language, a much-approved treatise on the same topic, in thirty-two books, which was afterwards translated into Latin by desire of the senate. But the early Greek works, with the exception of Xenophon’s _Œconomics_ and the poem of Hesiod called _Works and Days_, have been entirely lost; the tracts published in the collection entitled _Geoponica_, being subsequent to the age of Varro. MARCUS PORCIUS CATO,