BOOK XVIII. Lxi. 228-i.\ii. 231 



Nature, under the head of whieh we will register 

 the opinion of Cicero " in his own words : 



The mastich, ever green and ever teeming, 

 Is wont to swell with thrice-repeated produce : 

 Thrice bearing fruit, she marks three ploughing 

 seasons. 



One of these seasons, this last one, is the same also 

 for sowing flax and poppy. For poppy Cato gives R.R. 

 the follo^nng rule : ' On land used for corn bui-n -^^^^^^- ^- 

 any twigs and brushwood left over from your utiliza- 

 tion of them. Sow poppy in the place where you 

 have burnt them '. Wild poppy boiled in honey is 

 wonderfully serviceable for making throat-cures, and 

 also cultivated poppy is a powerful soporific. So far 

 as to wnter sowing. 



LXII. But correspondingly to complete a sort of Managemen 

 summary of the whole subject of cultivation, it will °/ '^"*y'*'"*'' 

 be suitable at the same time to manure the trees, 

 also to bank up the vines — one hand is enough to do 

 an acre — and where the nature of the locaUty will 

 allow, to prune the trees and the vines, to prepare 

 the ground with a double mattock for seed-plots, to 

 open up the ditches, to drain water ofF the land, and 

 to wash out and put away the wine-press. Do not put roulinj- 

 eggs under the hens to hatch after November 1 until ***?""^' *'*• 

 niid-winter is past ; all through thc summer till that 

 date give thirteen eggs to each hen, but fewer in 

 winter, though not less than nine. Democritus 

 thinks that the weather through the winter will be 

 the same as it was on the shortest day and the three 

 days round it, and he thinks so too in regard to the 

 summer and the weather at the summer solstice. 

 In most cases the fourteen days round mid-winter 



335 



