518 
pliny's natural histokt. 
[Book XVir. 
and cultiyation of trees — (for we have already said enough of 
the palm'^^ and the cj^tisus/^ when speaking of the exotic 
trees) — we shall proceed, in order that nothing may be omitted, 
to describe other details relative to their nature, which are of 
considerable importance, when taken in connection with all 
that precedes. Trees, we find, are attacked by maladies ; 
and, indeed, what created thing is there that is exempt from 
these evils ? Still however, the affections of the forest trees, 
it is said, are not attended with danger to them, and the 
only damage they receive is from hail-storms while they are 
budding and blossoming ; with the exception, indeed, of being 
nipped either by heat or cold blasts in unseasonable weather ; 
for frost, when it comes at the proper times, as we have already 
stated,''^ is serviceable to them. Well but,'' it will be said, 
is not the vine sometimes killed with cold ?" 'No doubt it is, 
and this it is through which we detect inherent faults in the 
soils, for it is only in a cold soil that the vine will die. Just in 
the same way, too, in winter we approve of cold, so long as 
it is the cold of the weather, and not of the ground. It is not 
the weakest trees, too, that are endangered in winter by frost, 
but the larger ones. When they are thus attacked, it is the 
summit that dries away the first, from the circumstance that 
the sap becomes frozen before it is able to arrive there. 
• Some diseases of trees are common to them all, while 
others, again, are peculiar to individual kinds / Worms are 
common to them all, and so, too, is sideration,"^^ with pains in 
the limbs, which are productive of debility in the various 
parts. Thus do we apply the names of the maladies that pre- 
vail among mankind to those with Avhich the plants are 
afflicted. In the same way, too, we speak of their bodies being 
mutilated, the eyes of the buds being burnt up, with many 
other expressions of a similar nature. It is in accordance 
with the same phraseology that we say that trees are afflicted 
with hunger or indigestion, both of which result from the 
In B, xiii. c. 6. In B. xiii. c. 47. 
'^^ This is the opinion of Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. B. iv. c. 16. 
^6 In c. 2 of this Book. 
77 "Yermiculatio." Fee understands this to apply to the attacks of insects 
in general, the Dermestes typographus more particularly. 
"'^ Or, in other words, the evil influences of the heavenly bodies : this, of 
course, is not believed in at the present day. 
'3 ^N'ecrosis, in particular portions of the plant. 
