4G0 
PLINY'3 NATUEAL history. [Book XVII. 
manure should be laid upon the land while^^ the west winds 
prevail, and during a dry moon. Most persons, however, mis- 
understand this precept, and think this should be done when 
the west winds are just beginning to blow, and in the month 
of February only ; it being really the fact that most crops 
require manuring in other months as well. At whatever 
period, however, it may be thought proper to manure the 
land, the greatest care should be taken that the wind is blow- 
ing due west at the time, and that the moon is on the wane, 
and quite dry. Such precautions as these will increase in a 
most surprising degree the fertilizing effects of manure. 
CHAP. 9. (10.) — THE MODES m WHICH TEEES BEAE. 
Having now treated at sufficient length of the requisite con- 
ditions of the weather and the soil, we shall proceed to speak 
of those trees which are the result of the care and inventive 
skill of man. Indeed, the varieties of them are hardly less 
numerous than of those which are produced by E'ature,^''^ so 
abundantly have we testified our gratitude in return for her 
numerous bounties. For these trees, we find, are reared either 
from seed, or else by transplanting, by layers, by slips torn from 
the stock, by cuttings, by grafting, or by cutting into the trunk 
of the tree. But as to the story that the leaves of the palm 
are planted by the Babylonians, and so give birth^® to a tree, 
I am really surprised that Trogus should have ever believed 
it. Some of the trees are reproduced by several of the me- 
thods above enumerated, others, again, by all of them. 
CHAP. 10. PLANTS WHICH AEE PEOPAGATED BY SEED. 
It is Nature herself that has taught us most of these me- 
thods, and more particularly that of sowing seed, as it was 
very soon, evident how the seed on falling to the ground revived 
1. e, in the early part of spring. In modern times, the period for 
manuring varies, according to the usage of different localities, being prac- 
tised in all the four seasons of the year, according to the crops, weather, 
and climate. ^'^ See B. xvi. c. 58. 
1^ The palm is grown in Africa from shoots thrown out from the axillae 
of the leaves ; and it is in this circumstance, Fee thinks, that the story told 
by Trogus must have originated. Some of the ferns throw out adventitious 
buds from the summit of the leaf, and the orange tree and some others 
occasionally have them at the base of the leaf. 
