Another copy, on a three-sided block, with four months on each face, was also found at Rome.1

It will be noted that we have here a combination of an ordinary calendar with memoranda for farmers. There are a few simple astronomical facts of general importance, the appropriate occupations of the season are set forth, and the chief festival of the month closes the account.

The resemblance to the modern almanac needs no emphasizing.

The miscellaneous precepts of the Almanac are likewise modern representatives of an ancient line. Many passages in Cato's treatise on Agriculture might be inserted in the Farmer's Calendar without our knowing the difference, except for a phrase or two that show some incompatibility of climate or custom. Here, for instance, are two extracts

1 See Mommsen, Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, I, 358-9; Römische Chronologie, 2d ed., 1859, p. 68; Real Museo Borbonico, II, ta. xliv.

from Cato, closely translated. They are almost startling in their resemblance to our Almanac. Yet Mr. Thomas is no more likely to have consulted Cato's Latin treatise than Cato is to have imitated the Old Farmer. The connection is one of subject and temper, of obscure but immemorial tradition, not of literary imitation.

Your oxen should be scrupulously looked after. Humor your ploughmen in some respects, so that they may be more willing to take care of the oxen. Have good ploughs and ploughshares. Don't plough rotten soil or drive a wagon or cattle over it. If you are not careful where you drive, you will lose three years' profit. Bed your sheep and oxen carefully, and let their hoofs be attended to. Protect sheep and cattle from the scab: this usually comes from insufficient feed or from exposure to the rain. Finish every job promptly; for, in farming, if you are late about one thing, everything will be behindhand. If straw is scarce, gather oak-leaves and use them as bedding for your sheep and oxen.1 Have a good large compost heap. Save manure carefully; when you carry it out [to the compost heap] cleanse it and pulverize it. Cart it out [on the land] in the fall. Loosen the soil round olive-trees in the fall and manure them. Cut the leaves of poplars, elms, and oaks in the season: store them up before they get too dry as fodder for sheep. After the fall rains sow turnips, fodder, and lupines. Cato, De Agri Cultura, cap. 5, § 6.

In rainy weather find something to do indoors. Don't be idle, but clean up about the buildings. Remember that expenses go on even if work stops. — Cap. 39, § 5.

In Mr. Thomas's earlier numbers the Farmer's Calendar is almost exclusively given to short directions for work appropriate to the successive days of the month: that is,

1 Compare the Farmer's Calendar for October, 1834: [Leaves] are collected and laid in stables instead of straw, and thus make a very good litter for cattle."

it is a calendar in the strictest sense, as may be seen in the facsimile on the opposite page. Only in the winter season, particularly in December, the farmer's holiday time, is a tendency visible toward longer and more general observations, and even here these are pretty carefully kept within the limits of the calendar form. The farmer is bidden to square his accounts; he is encouraged to read aloud in the long evenings; he is exhorted to remember the poor. Here, for instance, is the complete Farmer's Calendar for December, 1796.

Very little can be done on a farm, this month to much profit. Lay in dry fuel, while the snow keeps off.

Prepare and put in order, your sleds and sleighs as they will come in use very soon.

Look well to your barns, and fatting heards. ately, and spend frugally."

"Live temper

The cultivation of the earth, ought ever to be esteemed, as the most useful and necessary employment in life. The food, and raiment, by which all other orders of men are supported, are derived from the earth. Agriculture is of consequence; the art which supports, supplies, and maintains all the rest.

"Remember, ye wealthy and affluent, the sons and daughters of affliction and distress! Think of those, into whose shattered dwellings poverty enters to increase the inclemency and the horrours of the present season. Distribute bread to the hungry, and clothes to the naked." Discharge all the debts you have contracted the last year, with mechanics, shopkeepers, labourers, &c. before a new year commences.

The advice to square accounts in December is often repeated, and the author shows a good deal of ingenuity in varying the form of his precepts. In the first number of the Almanac (that for 1793), the admonition is short and sharp: "Adjust your accounts; see that your expenditures do not exceed your incomes." Next year there