Chap. 37.] THE DISEASES OF TKEES. 521 



each of these affections. In either case the first symptoms are 

 that the tree is suffering from pain, and the parts affected be- 

 come emaciated and brittle ; then follows rapid consumption 

 and ultimately death ; the juices being no longer able to enter 

 the diseased parts, or, at all events, not circulating in them. 

 The fig is more particularly liable to this disease : but the 

 wild fig is exempt from all that we have hitherto mentioned. 

 Scab 95 is produced by viscous dews which fall after the rising 

 of the Yergiliae ; but if they happen to fall copiously, they 

 drench the tree, without making the bark rough. When the 

 fig is thus attacked, the fruit falls off while green ; and so, too, 

 if there is too much rain. The fig suffers also from a super- 

 fluity of moisture in the roots. 



In addition to worms and sideration, the vine is subject to 

 a peculiar disease of its own, which attacks it in the joints, 

 and is produced from one of the three following causes : — 

 either the destruction of the buds by stormy weather, or else 

 the fact, as remarked by Theophrastus, that the tree, when 

 pruned, has been cut with the incisions upwards, 96 or has been 

 injured from want of skill in the cultivator. All the injury 

 that is inflicted in these various ways is felt by the tree in the 

 joints more particularly. It must be considered also as a 

 species of sideration, when the cold dews make the blossoms 

 fall off, and when the grapes harden 97 before they have attained 

 their proper size. Vines also become sickly when they are 

 perished with cold, and the eyes are frost-bitten just after they 

 have been pruned. Heat, too, out of season, is productive of 

 similar results : for everything is regulated according to a fixed 

 order and certain determinate movements. Some maladies, 

 too, originate in errors committed by the vine- dresser ; when 

 they are tied too tight, for instance, as already mentioned, 98 or 

 when in trenching round them the digger has .struck them an 

 unlucky blow, or when in ploughing about them the roots have 

 been strained through carelessness, or the bark has been 

 stripped from off the trunk: sometimes, too, contusions are 

 produced by the use of too blunt a priming-knife. Through 

 all the causes thus enumerated the tree is rendered more sen- 



95 From Theophrastus, . Hist. Plant, B. iv. c. 16. Fee is at a loss to 

 know what is meant by these viscous dews, and is unable to identify the 

 disease here mentioned as " scabies." It is not improbable that it was 

 caused by an insect. 96 See cc. 35 and 50 of this Book. 



9T See B. xviii. c. 69. 98 In c. 35. See also c. 45 of this Book 



