plements suited to his hand. It will never do to be always borrowing, and so waiting till others can lend, and the season has glided away. Delay is always bad policy:—
Sees full his barn, nor he that leaves work ever,
And still is gadding out. Care-flying ease
Gives labour ever competent increase:
He that with doubts his needful business crosses
Is always wrestling with uncertain losses."
—C. 48-53.
Accordingly, on the principle of having all proper implements of one's own, the poet proceeds to give instructions for the most approved make of a wain, a plough, a mortar, a pestle, and so forth. The time to fell timber, so that it be not worm-eaten, and so that it may not be cut when the sap is running, is when in autumn the Dog-star, Sirius, "gets more night and less day;"—in other words, when the summer heats abate, and men's bodies take a turn to greater lissomness and moisture. The pestle and mortar prescribed were a stone handmill or quern, for crushing and bruising corn and other grain, and bring us back to days of very primitive simplicity, though still in use in the days of Aristophanes. So minute is the poet in his directions for making the axle-tree of a waggon, that he recommends its length to be seven feet, but adds that it is well to cut an eight-foot length, that one foot sawn off may serve for the head of a mallet for driving in stakes. The axles of modern carts are about six feet long. But his great concern is, to give full particulars about
