The assured supply of wholesome and plentiful food for the cattle during winter, multiplied the number of the docks and herds, which in their turn contributed to the fertility of the soil.

To all these improvements may be added an assiduous attention to mines and fisheries, which, by employing a multitude of laborious hands, serve to increase the pleasures of the rich and the subsistence of the poor.

The elegant treatise of Columella describes the advanced state of the Spanish husbandry under the reign of Tiberius; and it may be observed, that those famines, which so frequently afflicted the infant republic, were seldom or never experienced by the extensive empire of Rome.

The accidental scarcity, in any single province, was immediately relieved by the plenty of its more fortunate neighbors.
Agriculture is the foundation of manufactures; since the productions of nature are the materials of art.

Under the Roman empire, the labor of an industrious and ingenious people was variously, but incessantly, employed in the service of the rich.