"What, sixty thousand," exclaimed Axius, "sixty thousand: you are making game of me!" "Sixty thousand," I affirmed, "but in order that you might realize such a lucky throw you will require either a public banquet or a triumph on the scale of that of Scipio Metellus, or club dinners, which indeed have now become so frequent as to raise the price of provisions of the market." "You will perchance expect this return every year," said Merula, "so I trust that your aviary may not lead you into a loss. But surely in such good times as these it could not happen that you would fail, except rarely, for what year is there that does not see such a feast or a triumph, or club dinners, such as now-a-days consume victuals without number. Nay," he added, "it seems that in our habit of luxury such a public banquet is a daily occurrence within the gates of Rome."[164] To supplement the examples of such profits: L. Albutius, a learned man and, as you know, the author of certain satires in the manner of Lucilius, has said that the returns from feeding live stock on his Alban farm are always less than his income from his villa, for the farm yields less than ten thousand sesterces and the villa more than twenty. He even maintains that if he should establish a villa near the sea in such a place as he might choose he could derive from it an income of more than a hundred thousand sesterces. Did not M. Cato recently sell forty thousand sesterces worth of fishes from the fish ponds of Lucullus after he had accepted the administration of his estate?" "My dear Merula," exclaimed Axius, "take me, I beg of you, as your pupil in the art of the husbandry of the steading." "I will begin," replied Merula, "as soon as you promise me a minerval in the form of a dinner."[165] "You shall have it," said Axius, "both today, and hereafter as well, off those delicacies you will teach me to rear." "I fear," replied Merula, "that what you may offer me at the beginning of your experience with villa feeding will be dead geese or deceased pea-cocks." "And what difference will it make to you," retorted Axius, "if I do serve you fish or fowl which has come to an untimely end: for in no event could you eat them unless they were dead: but I beg you," he added, "matriculate me in the school of villa husbandry and expound to me the theory and the practice of it." Merula accepted the invitation cheerfully. _Of the Roman development of the industries of the steading_ III. "In the first place," he said, "you should know what kind of creatures you may raise or feed in or about a villa, either for your profit or for your pleasure. There are three divisions for this study: poultry houses, warrens and fish ponds.