192 VARRO ON FARMING [bk. 



so that they may be three when they calve — if they 

 are four years old, so much the better. Most cows 

 go on bearing for ten years, some even longer. The 

 most suitable time for the beginning of pregnancy 

 is during a period of forty or a few more days from 

 the rising of the Dolphin ; ' for those which have so 

 conceived calve at the most temperate time of the 

 14 year, as cows are pregnant ten months. I have 

 found recorded a strange fact about them: if they 

 are covered by a bull immediately after he has been 

 castrated they conceive." They should graze in green 

 and watery places. Care must be taken not to let 

 them stand too near one another, and that they do 



^ Delphini. The Geoponica (xvll, 10, 3) fix the time — in the 

 . early part of June — wpa Zt Trpbg dxi^av ij dirb Sf\<lnvog iTnroXijgy 

 TOVTsari Trepl rag apxag tov ^lovviov firivog, eojg y'ffiepuiv fi (40). Colu- 

 mella (xi, 2, 45) says that the Dolphin rises in the evening on 

 loth June. He (vi, 24, i) gives July as the proper time. 

 Pliny, in a chapter which borrows largely from Varro (viii, 45), 

 has Coitus a Delphini Exortu ad [sic] pridie Nonas Januarias 

 diehus xxxx. 



I have no doubt that Pliny wrote Coitus a D. Exortu ad dies 

 xxxXy and that the rest is the gloss of an ignorant scribe who 

 wished to explain Delphini exortus and, remembering another 

 passage of Pliny (xviii, 26) : Pridie Non. Jan. Caesari Delph- 

 inus matutino exoritur^ used it as a note which was afterwards 

 inserted in the text. Or it may have been a slip made by Pliny 

 himself — using his commonplace books carelessly, and con- 

 fusing the evening rising, which Varro obviously means, with 

 the morning rising of the Dolphin. Keil and others notice the 

 discrepancy but do not explain how it — probably — arose. 



^ Concipere. Cf Aristotle (De Gen. An., i, 4): koI TjSrf ravpng 



Tig, fifTci rqv iKTO/xriv, fvBkior dx^vtrag tTT\r}pu)ai, did to /x/yTTw Tovg 

 TTopovg dvtairdaOai.. 



