I] SOWING, PLANTING, GRAFTING 87 



flashes are produced at one stroke from that which 

 has generated the flash as there are kinds of plants 

 grafted on one tree. If you graft a pear-shoot on a 

 wild pear-tree, no matter how good the latter the 

 flavour will not be so good as if you had grafted it 

 on one that is not wild. 



6 On whatever tree you graft, supposing it and the 

 shoot to be grafted of the same kind — for example 



• if both be apple-trees — you should (if you hope for 

 good fruit) so graft that the shoot is of a better kind 



alludes to this passage, does not, unfortunately, explain It. 

 His words are: Neque omnia insita misceri fas est, sicut me 

 spinas inseri quando fulgura expiari non queunt facile : quotque 

 genera Insita fuerunt tot fulgura uno Ictu pronuntlantur. 

 Again (xvli, 17) he states that religio fulgurum forbids the 

 grafting of a mulberry on a branch. He mentions that all 

 lightnings (II, 52) did not come "from the stars," but ex 

 proxima atque turbidiore natura. Some trees were not struck, 

 the laurel for Instance (II, 55). But why the grafting on 

 certain trees should make them more likely to be struck no 

 one explains. Perhaps the haruspices found that some trees 

 invited the lightning more than others, and regarded the 

 piercing of holes for grafting as a further Invitation. Seneca 

 (Nat. Quaest., II, 40), discussing /w/wma (/m/;w^» he defines 

 as concentrated /w/^^r), says that one sort goes out by the 

 hole {foramen) through which It entered ; another kind does 

 not, but shatters what It strikes. He speaks also (Nat. 

 Quaest., I, i) of exhalation from the earth, some dry, some 

 I ^gnibus concipiendls idonea. May the whole passage, then, 

 ' mean that an exhalation of this kind {illud quod fulmen 

 concepit), on reaching a suitable tree, makes entry at each 

 of the weak places (where the grafts have been made) and 

 becomes so many fulmina? The libri fulgurales of the Etrus- 

 can Haruspices would doubtless explain. 



