Chap. 4.5.] REMEDIES FOE THE DISEASES OF <3HIAIN. 57 



kills the bean, after it has been exposed, while wet, to the 

 blasts of a certain wind : when it grows in a thin, light soil, 

 this plant is called " teramon." The seed of darnel is ex- 

 tremely minute, and is enclosed in a prickly husk. If intro- 

 duced into bread, it will speedily produce vertigo ; and it is 

 said that in Asia and Greece, the bath-keepers, when they want 

 to disperse a crowd of people, throw this seed upon burning 

 coals. The phalangiuin, a diminutive insect of the spider 

 genus, 29 breeds in the fitch, if the winter happens to be wet. 

 Slugs, too, breed in the vetch, and sometime* a tiny snail makes 

 its way out of the ground, and eats it away in a most singular 

 manner. 



These are pretty nearly all the maladies to which grain is 

 subject. 



CHAP. 45. - THE BEST REMEDIES FOR THE DISEASES OF GRAIN. 



The best remedy for these maladies, so long as grain is in 

 the blade, is the weeding-hook, and, at the moment of sowing, 

 ashes. 30 As to those diseases which develope themselves in the 

 seed and about the root, with due care precautions may be ef- 

 fectually employed against them. It is generally supposed that 

 if seed has been first steeped in wine, 31 it will be less exposed 

 to disease. Virgil 32 recommends that beans should be drenched 

 with nitre and amurca of olives ; and he says that if this is 

 done, they will be all the larger. Some persons, again, are of 

 opinion, that they will grow of increased size, if the seed is 

 steeped for three days before it is sown in a solution of urine 

 and water. If the ground, too, is hoed three times, a modius 

 of beans in the pod, they say, will yield not less than a modius 



the vicinity of Philippi makes the beans difficult to cook or boil, ar 

 From this word he has coined two imaginary plants, the "ateramon," 

 and the " teramon." Hardouin defends Pliny, by suggesting that he has 

 borrowed the passage from another source, while Fee doubts if he really 

 understood the Greek language. 



29 More probably one of the Coleoptera. He borrows from Theo- 

 phrastus, Hist. Anim. B. viii. c. 10. 



30 This will only prevent the young plants from becoming a prey to 

 snails and slugs. 



31 This plan is attended with no good results. 



32 Georg. i. 193. It is generally said that if seed is steeped in a solu- 

 tion of nitre, and more particularly hydrochloric acid, it will germinate 

 with accelerated rapidity ; the produce, liowever, is no finer than at other 

 times. 



