520 
Pliny's natueal histoet. [BookXYIL 
effects produced by hail-storms, carbunculation/^ and the 
damage caused hj hoar-frosts. When the approach of spring 
tempts the still tender shoots to make their appearance, and 
they venture to burst forth, the malady attacks them, and 
scorches up the eyes of the buds, filled as they are with 
their milky juices : this is what upon flowers they call char- 
coal blight. The consequences of hoar-frost to plants are 
even more dangerous still, for when it has once settled, it 
remains there in a frozen form, and there is never any wind to 
remove it, seeing that it never prevails except in weather that 
is perfectly calm and serene. Sideration, however, properly 
so called, is a certain heat and dryness that prevails at the 
rising of the^^ Dog-star, and owing to which grafts and young 
trees pine away and die, the fig and the vine more particu- 
larly. The olive, also, besides the worm, to which it is equally 
subject with the fig, is attacked by the measles, or as some 
think fit to call it, the fungus or platter ; it is a sort of blast 
produced by the heat of the sun. Cato^^ says that the red 
moss^^ is also deleterious to the olive. An excessive fertility, 
too, is very often injurious to the vine and the olive. Scab is a 
malady common to all trees. Eruptions, ^'^ too, and the attacks 
of a kind of snail that grows on the bark, are diseases peculiar 
to the fig, but not in all countries ; for there are some maladies 
that are prevalent in certain localities only. 
In the same way that man is subject to diseases of the si- 
news, so are the trees as well, and, like him, in two different 
ways. Either^^ the virulence of the disease manifests itself in 
the feet, or, what is the same thing, the roots of the tree, or 
else in the joints of the fingers, or, in other words, the extre- 
mities of the branches that are most distant from the trunk. 
The parts that are thus affected become dry and shrivel up : 
the Greeks have appropriate names^^ by which to distinguish 
The effects produced upon 5'oung shoots by frost, are still so called. 
Probably from the black colour which it turns. 
In this case it would be very similar to what we call sun-stroke. 
^9 "Clavum," a nail. He appears to allude to a gall that appears on the 
bark of the olive, the eruption forming the shape of a nail, and, in some 
instances, a " patella," or platter. The Coccus adonideum is an insect 
that is very destructive to the olive. De Re Bust. 6. 
91 A sort of Erineum, Fee suggests. See B. xv. c. 6. 
92 *' Impetigo." Tetter," or " ringworm," literally. 
93 From Theophrastus, Hist. Plant. B. iv. c. 16. 
20aK£Xi(7/>i6g and KQctdog, 
