518 pllnt's nattjeal histoey. [Book XVII. 



and cultivation of trees — (for we have already said enough of 

 the palm 73 and the cytisus, 74 when speaking of the exotic 

 trees) — we shall proceed, in order that nothing may be omitted^ 

 to describe other details relative to their nature, which are of 

 considerable importance, when taken in connection with all 

 that precedes. Trees, we find, are attacked by maladies; 

 and, indeed, what created thing is there that is exempt from 

 these evils ? Still however, the affections of the forest trees, 

 it is said, are not attended 75 with danger to them, and the 

 only damage they receive is from hail-storms while they are 

 budding and blossoming ; with the exception, indeed, of being 

 nipped either by heat or cold blasts in unseasonable weather ; 

 for frost, when it comes at the proper times, as we have already 

 stated, 76 is serviceable to them. " Well but," it will be said, 

 " is not the vine sometimes killed with cold ?" No doubt it is, 

 and this it is through which we detect inherent faults in the 

 soils, for it is only in a cold soil that the vine will die. Just in 

 the same way, too, in winter we approve of cold, so long as 

 it is the cold of the weather, and not of the ground. It is not 

 the weakest trees, too, that are endangered in winter by frost, 

 but the larger ones. When they are thus attacked, it is the 

 summit that dries away the first, from the circumstance that 

 the sap becomes frozen before it is able to arrive there. 



Some diseases of trees are common to them all, while 

 others, again, are peculiar to individual kinds / Worms 77 are 

 common to them all, and so, too, is sideration, 73 with pains in 

 the limbs, 79 which ai'e productive of debility in the various 

 parts. Thus do we apply the names of the maladies that pre- 

 vail among mankind to those with which the plants are 

 afflicted. In the same way, too, we speak of their bodies being 

 mutilated, the eyes of the buds being burnt up, with many 

 other expressions of a similar nature. It is in accordance 

 with the same phraseology that we say that trees are afflicted 

 with hunger or indigestion, both of which result from the 



73 In B, xiii. c. 6. 74 In B. xiii. c. 47. 



75 This is the opinion of Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. B. iv. c. 16. 



76 In c. 2 of this Book. 



77 "Vermiculatio." Fee understands this to apply to the attacks of insects 

 in general, the Dermestes typographic more particularly. 



78 Or, in other words, the evil influences of the heavenly bodies : this, of 

 course, is not believed in at the present day. 



79 Necrosis, in particular portions of the piant. 



