No. 3. Plough, made of one crooked piece of wood, turned once or twice. No. 4. Plough, as used by the Gauls, furnished with wheels. When the harvest season arrived, they joyfully prepared to cut the corn, with instruments varying in form according to the locality or the fancy of the master. In one place they adopted the plain sickle,[I-39] in another that with teeth.[I-40] Sometimes they mowed the corn, as they did the meadows, with a scythe;[I-41] or else they plucked off the ears with a kind of fork, armed with five teeth.[I-42] A short time after the harvest, the operation of thrashing generally began. Heavy chariots, armed with [Illustration: _Pl. 2_] pointed teeth, crushed the ears: Varro calls this machine the “Carthaginian chariot.”[I-43] Strabo asserts that the ancient Britons carried the corn into a large covered area, or barn, where they thrashed it; adding that, without this precaution, the rain and damp would have spoiled the grain.[I-44] At all events, this kind of thrashing in barns, with flails and sticks, was not unknown to other countries; Pliny speaks of it,[I-45] and Columella describes it;[I-46] we may add that the Egyptians were also very probably acquainted with this method, since the Jews, who had submitted to their power, employed it themselves.[I-47] When the corn had been thrashed, winnowed, and put into baskets very similar to our own of the present day,[I-48] they immediately studied the best means of preserving it: some preferred granaries exposed to a mild temperature, others had extensive edifices with thick brick walls without openings, except one hole only, in the roof, to admit light and air. The Spaniards, Africans, and Cappadocians, dug deep ditches, from which they excluded all moisture; they covered the bottom and lined the sides with straw, then put in the grain, and covered it up. The ancients were of opinion that corn in the ear could, by this means, be preserved a great number of years.[I-49] If it is desirable to keep corn for any length of time, choose the finest and best grown. After having worked it, make a pile as high as the ceiling will permit. Cover with a layer of quicklime, powdered, of about three inches thick; then, with a watering-pot, moisten this lime, which forms a crust with the corn. The outside seeds bud, and shoot forth a stalk, which perishes in winter. This corn is only to be touched when necessity requires it. At Sedan, a warehouse has been seen, hewed out of the rock and tolerably damp, in which there had been a considerable pile of corn for the last hundred and ten years. It was covered with a crust a foot thick, on which persons might walk without bending or breaking it in the slightest degree.