Chap. 35.] CITLTFEE OF THE VINE. 501 



if they are a spade in breadth ; but if holes are employed for 

 the purpose, they should be three feet every way. The depth 

 required for every kind of vine is three feet ; it should, there- 

 fore, be made a point not to transplant any vine that is less 

 than three feet in length, allowing then two buds to be above 

 the ground. It will be necessary, too, to soften the earth by 

 working little furrows at the bottom of the hole, and mixing 

 it up with manure. Where the ground is declivitous, it is 

 requisite that the hole should be deeper, in addition to which 

 it should be artificially elevated on the edge of the lower side. 

 Holes of this nature, which are made a little longer, to receive 

 two vines, are known as " alvei," or beds. The root of the 

 vine should occupy the middle of the hole, and when firmly 

 fixed in the ground it should incline at the top due east ; its 

 first support it ought to receive from a reed. 12 The vineyard 

 should be bounded by a decuman 13 path eighteen feet in width, 

 sufficiently wide, in fact, to allow two carts to pass each other ; 

 others, again, should run at right angles to it, ten feet in 

 width, and passing through the middle of each jugerum ; or 

 else, if the vineyard is of very considerable extent, cardinal 14 

 paths may be formed instead of them, of the same breadth as 

 the decuman path. At the end, too, of every five of the stays a 

 path should be made to run, or, in other words, there should 

 be one continuous cross-piece to every five stays ; each space 

 that is thus included from one end to the other forming a 

 bed. 15 



Where the soil is dense and hard it must be turned up only 

 with the spade, and nothing but quicksets should be planted 

 there ; but where, on the other hand, it is thin and loose, 

 mallet-shoots even may be set either in hole or furrow. Where 

 the ground is declivitous it is a better plan to draw furrows 

 across than to turn up all the soil with the spade, so that the 

 falling away of the earth may be counteracted by the position 

 of the cross-pieces. 16 It will be best, too, where the weather 



are made to run as much as possible from east to west. Most of the rules 

 here mentioned by Pliny are still adopted in France. 



12 Fee regards tins precept as a puerility. 



13 See B. xviii. c. 77.' 



14 See B. xviii. c. 77. Decuman roads or paths ran from east to west ; 

 cardinal roads were tbose at right angles to them. 



15 " Pagina." A set, compartment, or bed. 



16 " Transtris." " Bidges," would appear to be the proper reading here ; 



