THE ORIGINAL PREFACE TO VOL. I

The text translated here for Books I–II, VI–VII, X–XI, and De Arboribus (On Trees) is based on the edition by Lundström, with some changes in spelling, punctuation, and capitalization to conform more closely to English and American usage. For the remaining six books, the translator has attempted to construct a reasonably comparable text by comparing five important manuscripts with the latest printed edition, that of Schneider (1794).

The translator is greatly indebted to the Faculty Research Fund of the University of Pennsylvania for a grant that made it possible for him to examine a number of Columella manuscripts abroad and to purchase photostatic copies of the four major codices ancient manuscript volumes. Grateful acknowledgment is made of the permission granted by the Trustees of the Pierpont Morgan Library to include the readings of the Morgan manuscript of Columella. The thanks of the writer are also due to his colleague Axel Johan Uppvall, Professor of Scandinavian Languages at the University of Pennsylvania, for the translation of numerous Swedish works.

A full index to this work of Columella will be supplied at the end of the third volume when it is issued.

Harrison Boyd Ash.

University of Pennsylvania
April 10, 1940