Chap. 35.] 
ClTLTirUE OF THE TINE. 
501 
if they are a spade in breadth ; but if holes are employed for 
the purpose, they should be three feet every way. The depth 
required for every kind of vine is three feet ; it should, there- 
fore, be made a point not to transplant any vine that is less 
than three feet in length, allowing then two buds to be above 
the ground. It will be necessary, too, to soften the earth by 
working little furrows at the bottom of the hole, and mixing 
it up with manure. Where the ground is declivitous, it is 
requisite that the hole should be deeper, in addition to which 
it should be artificially elevated on the edge of the lower side. 
Holes of this nature, which are made a little longer, to receive 
two vines, are known as alvei," or beds. The root of the 
vine should occupy the middle of the hole, and when firmly 
fixed in the ground it should incline at the top due east ; its 
first support it ought to receive from a reed.^^ The vineyard 
should be bounded by a decuman^^ path eighteen feet in width, 
sufficiently wide, in fact, to allow two carts to pass each other ; 
others, again, should run at right angles to it, ten feet in 
width, and passing through the middle of each jugerum ; or 
else, if the vineyard is of very considerable extent, cardinal^* 
paths may be formed instead of them, of the same breadth as 
the decuman path. At the end, too, of every five of the stays a 
path should be made to run, or, in other words, there should 
be one continuous cross-piece to every five stays ; each space 
that is thus included from one end to the other forming a 
bed.^^ 
Where the soil is dense and hard it must be turned up only 
with the spade, and nothing but quicksets should be planted 
there ; but where, on the other hand, it is thin and loose, 
mallet-shoots even may be set either in hole or furrow. Where 
the ground is declivitous it is a better plan to draw furrows 
across than to turn up all the soil with the spade, so that the 
falling away of the earth may be counteracted by the position 
of the cross-pieces.^^ It will be best, too, where the weather 
are made to run as much as possible from east to west. Most of the rules 
bere mentioned by PHny are still adopted in France. 
12 Fee regards this precept as a puerility. 
13 See B. xviii. c. 77. 
1* See B. xviii. c. 77. Decuman roads or paths ran from east to west ; 
cardinal roads were those at right angles to them. 
15 K Pagina." A set, compartment, or bed. 
16 " Transtris.'* "Eidges," would appear to be the proper reading here ; 
