Latin Texts & Translations

There is no grain more prolific than wheat, Nature having bestowed upon it this quality, as being the substance which she destined for the principal nutriment of man. A modius of

wheat, if the soil is favourable, as at Byzacium, ^[Note] a champaign district of Africa, will yield as much as one hundred and fifty ^[Note] modii of grain. The procurator of the late Emperor Augustus sent him from that place—a fact almost beyond belief—little short of four hundred shoots all springing from a single grain; and we have still in existence his letters on the subject. In a similar manner, too, the procurator of Nero sent him three hundred and sixty stalks all issuing from a single grain. ^[Note] The plains of Leontium in Sicily, and other places in that island, as well as the whole of Bætica, and Egypt more particularly, yield produce a hundred-fold. The most prolific kinds of wheat are the ramose wheat, ^[Note] and that known as the "hun- dred-grain" ^[Note] wheat. Before now, as many as one hundred beans, too, have been found on a single stalk.