Chap. 37.] 
THE DISEASES OF TEEES* 
521 
each of these affections. In either case the first symptoms are 
that the tree is suffering from pain, and the parts affected he- 
come emaciated and brittle ; then follows rapid consumption 
and ultimately death ; the juices being no longer able to enter 
the diseased parts, or, at all events, not circulating in them. 
The fig is more particularly liable to this disease : but the 
wild fig is exempt from all that we have hitherto mentioned. 
Scab^^ is produced by viscous dews which fall after the rising 
of the Yergiliee ; but if they happen to fall copiously, they 
drench the tree, without making the bark rough. When the 
fig is thus attacked, the fruit falls off while green ; and so, too, 
if there is too much rain. The fig suffers also from a super- 
fluity of moisture in the roots. 
In addition to Worms and sideration, the vine is subject to 
a peculiar disease of its own, which attacks it in the joints, 
and is produced from one of the three following causes : — 
either the destruction of the buds by stormy weather, or else 
the fact, as remarked by Theophrastus, that the tree, when 
pruned, has been cut with the incisions upwards, or has been 
injured from want of skill in the cultivator. All the injury 
that is inflicted in these various ways is felt by the tree in the 
joints more particularly. It must be considered also as a 
species of sideration, when the cold dews make the blossoms 
fall off, and when the grapes harden^^ before they have attained 
their proper size. Yines also become sickly when they are 
perished with cold, and the eyes are frost-bitten just after they 
have been pruned. Heat, too, out of season, is productive of 
similar results : for everything is regulated according to a fixed 
order and certain determinate movements. Some maladies, 
too, originate in errors committed by the vine- dresser ; when 
they are tied too tight, for instance, as already mentioned, or 
when in trenching round them the digger has struck them an 
unlucky blow, or when in ploughing about them the roots have 
been strained through carelessness, or the bark has been 
stripped from off the trunk: sometimes, too, contusions are 
produced by the use of too blunt a pruning-knife. Through 
all the causes thus enumerated the tree is rendered more sen- 
95 From Theophrastus, Hist. Plant, B. iv. c. 16. Fee is at a loss to 
know what is meant by these viscous dews, and is unable to identify the 
disease here mentioned as " scabies." It is not improbable that it was 
caused by an insect. See cc. 35 and 50 of this Book. 
97 See B. xviii. c. 69. 98 In c. 35. See also c. 45 of this Book. 
