BOOK XVIII. Lvi. 204-206 



But it is universally agreed that so^ving must not 

 be done in the period of mid-winter, for the con- 

 vincing reason that winter seeds when sown before 

 mid-winter break out in a week, but if sown after 

 it scarcely begin to appear in four weeks. There 

 are somc who hasten matters on and put forward 

 the dictum that, while sowing in haste often 

 proves deceptive, sowing late always does. Others 

 on the opposite side think that sowing even in 

 spring is preferable to sowing in a bad autumn, and 

 that if this is necessary it should be done between 

 the arrival of the west wind<* and the spring equinox. 

 Some people ignore nice points of meteorology and 

 fix hmits by the calendar : flax, oats and poppy in 

 spring and up to the Feast of the Five Days,** a prac- 

 tice even now observed in the districts north of the 

 Po, beans and common wheat in November, emmer 

 wheat at the end of September on to October 15, and 

 others after that date on to November 1. Thus 

 these latter writers pay no attention to Nature, 

 while the previous set pay too much, and conse- 

 quently their elaborate theorizing is all in the dark, 

 as the issue Ues between countrymen and Uterary, 

 not merely astronomical, pundits ! And it must be 

 confessed that these matters do chiefly depend on 

 the weather — as in fact Virgil'^ enjoins first before 

 all else to learn the winds and the habits of the stars, 

 and to observe them just in the same way as they 

 are observed for navigation. It is an arduous and a 

 vast aspiration — to succeed in introducing the divine 

 science of the heavens to the ignorance of the rustic, 

 but it must be attempted, owing to the vast benefit 

 it confers on Hfe. Nevertheless we must first submit 

 to contemplation the difficulties of astronomy, which 



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