BOOK V. IV. i-v. I 



being tied by means of props formed of reeds. These 

 some people call " staked " vines. The type which 2 

 comes last in esteem is the vine which lies flat on the 

 ground and which, being as it were projected from 

 the stock as soon as it grows out of the earth, stretches 

 all over the ground. 



The conditions under which all these vines are 

 planted are almost identical. The plants are placed 

 either in a plant-hole or in a furrow, since the 

 farmers of foreign races are unacquainted with 

 trenching, which indeed is almost superfluous in 

 places where the soil crumbles and has fallen to pieces 

 of its own accord, for, as Vergil says ; * 



'Tis this that with the plough we imitate, 



that is to say in fact by trenching.* Thus 3 

 the Campanians, though they might take a neigh- 

 bouring example from us, do not employ this method 

 of working the ground, because the ease with which 

 their soil can be cultivated calls for less labour ; but 

 wherever a dense soil calls for a greater expenditure 

 on the part of the pi*ovincial peasant, what we effect 

 by soil-preparation he achieves by making a furrow 

 in order that he may set his plants in soil which has 

 already been worked into a looser condition. 



V. But that I may deal particularly with each Methods of 

 kind of the vine of which I have proposed to speak, v?ies[**"^ 

 I will resume the order already mentioned. The 

 vine which stands by virtue of its own strength with- 

 out any prop must in rather loose soil be placed in a 

 planting-hole, in denser soil in a furrow, but both 

 planting-holes and furrows are very beneficial, if, in 

 temperate regions where the summer is not ex- 

 cessively hot, they are made a year before the vine- 



29 



