United States or Barbados ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
One volume, the Geoponica, a Greek compilation concerning whose authorship and date there has been much dispute, is attributed in Bibliotheca Piscatoria to the beginning of the 10th century. It contains one book on fish, fish-ponds and fishing, with prescriptions for baits, &c., extracted for the most part from other writers.
It is found in some form in almost every book on agriculture since Cato, until we reach the literature in which science has taken the place of wisdom in the Byzantine Geoponica, the Italian Crescenzi, the Dutch Heresbach, the French Maison Rustique, and the English Gervase Markkam.
Agricultural Biography, etc. London, 1854. Printed for the Author. I ought, perhaps, to make definite exception in the case of a writer so universally accredited. In his "Encyclopædia of Gardening," he speaks of the "Geoponica" as the work of "modern Greeks," written after the transfer of the seat of empire to Constantinople; whereas the bulk of those treatises were written long before that date.
W.R. Paton, in Folk-lore, i. p. 524. Hist. xvii. 266, xxviii. 78; Columella, De re rustica, x. 358 sq., xi. 3. 64; Palladius, De re rustica, i. 35. 3; Geoponica, xii. 8. 5 sq.; Aelian, Nat. A similar preventive is employed for the same purpose by North American Indians and European peasants.
The Zend-Avesta, translated by J. Darmesteter, i. See id., pp. 9, 181-185, Fargard, i. 18 and 19, xvi. 1-18. Pliny, Nat. Hist. vii. 64 sq., xxviii. 77 sqq. Compare Geoponica, xii. 20. 5 and 25. 2; Columella, De re rustica, xi. 357 sqq.
Columella, Heresbach, Worlidge, and even the writers of the "Geoponica," dwindle into insignificance in the comparison. He is not, indeed, always absolutely accurate on historical points; but in all essentials his books are so complete as to have made them standard works up to a time long subsequent to their issue.
Word Of The Day