ENQUIRY INTO PLANTS, II. n. ii-m. i 



attention required. In like manner plainly some wild 

 things become cultivated and some cultivated things 

 become wild ; for the one kind of change is due to 

 cultivation, the other to neglect : however it might 

 be said that this is not a change but a natural 

 development towards a better or an inferior form ; 

 (for that it is not possible to make a wild olive pear 

 or fig into a cultivated olive pear or fig). As to that 

 indeed which is said to occur in the case of the wild 

 olive, that if the tree is transplanted with its top- 

 growth entirely cut off, 1 it produces ' coarse olives/ 2 

 this is no 3 very great change. However it can make 

 no difference which way 4 one takes this. 



Of spontaneous changes in the character of trees, and of certain 



marvels. 



III. 5 Apart from these changes it is said that in such 

 plants there is a spontaneous kind of change, some- 

 times of the fruit, sometimes of the tree itself as a 

 whole, and soothsayers call such changes portents. For 

 instance, an acid pomegranate, it is said, may produce 

 sweet fruit, and conversely ; and again, in general, 

 the tree itself sometimes undergoes a change, so that 

 it becomes sweet 6 instead of acid, or the reverse 

 happens. And the change to sweet is considered a 

 worse portent. Again a wild fig may turn into a 

 cultivated one, or the contrary change take place ; 

 and the latter is a worse portent. So again a culti- 

 vated olive may turn into a wild one, or conversely, 

 but the latter change is rare. So again a white fig 



* i.e. whether nature or man is said to cause the admitted 

 change. 6 Plin. 17. 242. 



B i.e. all the fruit is now acid instead of sweet, or the 

 reverse. Sch. brackets t oelas . . . b 



