520 plint's natueal history. [Book XVII. 



effects produced by hail- storms, carbunculation, 86 and the 

 damage caused by hoar-frosts. When the approach of spring 

 tempts the still tender shoots to make their appearance, and 

 they venture to burst forth, the malady attacks them, and 

 scorches up the eyes of the buds, filled as they are with 

 their milky juices : this is what upon flowers they call " char- 

 coal" 87 blight. The consequences of hoar-frost to plants are 

 even more dangerous still, for when it has once settled, it 

 remains there in a frozen form, and there is never any wind to 

 remove it, seeing that it never prevails except in weather that 

 is perfectly calm and serene. Sideration, however, properly 

 so ^ called, is a certain heat and dryness that prevails at the 

 rising of the 88 Dog-star, and owing to which grafts and young 

 trees pine away and die, the fig and the vine more particu- 

 larly. The olive, also, besides the worm, to which it is equally 

 subject with the fig, is attacked by the measles, 89 or as some 

 think fit to call it, the fungus or platter ; it is a sort of blast 

 produced by the heat of the sun. Cato 90 says that the red 

 moss 91 is also deleterious to the olive. An excessive fertility, 

 too, is very often injurious to the vine and the olive. Scab is a 

 malady common to all trees. Eruptions, 92 too, and the attacks 

 of a kind of snail that grows on the bark, are diseases peculiar 

 to the fig, but not in all countries ; for there are some maladies 

 that are prevalent in certain localities only. 



In the same way that man is subject to diseases of the si- 

 news, so are the trees as well, and, like him, in two different 

 ways. Either 93 the virulence of the disease manifests itself in 

 the feet, or, what is the same thing, the roots of the tree, or 

 else in the joints of the fingers, or, in other words, the extre- 

 mities of the branches that are most distant from the trunk. 

 The parts that are thus affected become dry and shrivel up : 

 the Greeks have appropriate names 94 by which to distinguish 



86 The effects produced upon young shoots by frost, are still so called. 



87 Probably from the black colour which it turns. 



88 In this case it would be very similar to what we call sun-stroke. 



89 "Clavum," a nail. He appears to allude to a gall that appears on the 

 bark of the olive, the eruption forming the shape of a nail, and, in some 

 instances, a "patella," or platter. The Coccus adonideum is an insect 

 that is very destructive to the olive. 9° De Ee Rust. 6. 



91 A sort of Erineum, Fee suggests. See B. xv. c 6. 



92 " Impetigo." " Tetter," or " ringworm," literally. 



93 From Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. B. iv. c. 16. 



94 S^a/ctXioyioc, and icpadog. 



