(20.) After the furrows have been gone over again transversely, the clods are broken, where there is a necessity for it, with either the harrow or the rake;[363] and this operation is repeated after the seed has been put in. This last harrowing is done, where the usage of the locality will allow of it, with either a toothed harrow, or else a plank attached to the plough. This operation of covering in the seed is called “lirare,” from which is derived the word “deliratio.”[364] Virgil,[365] it is generally thought, intends to recommend sowing after _four_ ploughings, in the passage where he says that land will bear the best crop, which has twice felt the sun and twice the cold. Where the soil is dense, as in most parts of Italy, it is a still better plan to go over the ground five times before sowing; in Etruria, they give the land as many as nine ploughings first. The bean, however, and the vetch may be sown with no risk, without turning up the land at all; which, of course, is so much labour saved. We must not here omit to mention still one other method of ploughing, which the devastations of warfare have suggested in Italy that lies beyond the Padus. The Salassi,[366] when ravaging the territories which lay at the foot of the Alps, made an attempt to lay waste the crops of panic and millet that were just appearing above the ground. Finding, however, that Nature resisted all their endeavours, they passed the plough over the ground, the result of which was that the crops were more abundant than ever; and this it was that first taught us the method of ploughing in, expressed by the word “artrare,” otherwise “aratrare,” in my opinion the original form. This is done either just as the stem begins to develope itself, or else when it has put forth as many as two or three leaves. Nor must we withhold from the reader a more recent method, which was discovered the year but one before this,[367] in the territory of the Treviri. The crops having been nipped by the extreme severity of the winter, the people sowed the land over again in the month of March, and had a most abundant harvest. We shall now proceed to a description of the peculiar methods employed in cultivating each description of grain. CHAP. 50. (21.)—THE METHODS OF HARROWING, STUBBING, AND HOEING, EMPLOYED FOR EACH DESCRIPTION OF GRAIN. THE USE OF THE HARROW.