528 
PLI!!fY's KATUEAL HISTOEY. 
[Book XVII. 
remedies as well. Some of these remedies may be applied to 
all kinds of trees in common, while others, again, are peculiar 
to some only. The methods that are common to them all, are, 
baring the roots, or moulding them up, thus admitting the air 
or keeping it away, as the case may be ; giving them water, or 
depriving them of it, refreshing them with the nutritious juices, 
of manure, and lightening them of their burdens by pruning. 
The operation, too, of bleeding, as it were, is performed upon 
them by withdrawing their juices, and the bark is scraped all 
round^^ to improve them. In the vine, the stock branches are 
sometimes lengthened out, and at other times repressed ; the 
buds too are smoothed, and in a measure polished up, in case 
the cold weather has made them rough and scaly. These re- 
medies are better suited to some kinds of trees and less so to 
others : thus the cypress, for instance, has a dislike to water, 
and manifests an aversion to manure, spading round it, pruning, 
and, indeed, remedial operations of every kind ; nay, what is 
more, it is killed by irrigation, while, on the other hand, the 
vine and the pomegranate receive their principal nutriment 
from it. In the fig, again, the tree is nourished by watering, 
while the very same thing will make the fruit pine and die : 
the almond, too, if the ground is spaded about it, will lose its 
blossom. In the same way, too, there must be no digging 
about the roots of trees when newly grafted, or indeed until 
such time as they are sufficiently strong to bear. Many 
trees require that all superfluous burdens should be pruned 
away from them, just as we ourselves cut the nails and hair. 
Old trees are often cut down to the ground, and then shoot up 
again from one of the suckers ; this, however, is not the case- 
with all of them, but only those, the nature of which, as we 
have already stated, will admit of it. 
CHAP. 40. — methobs of ieeigatiok. 
Watering is good for trees during the heats of summer, but 
injurious in winter ; the effects of it are of a varied nature in 
autumn, and depend upon the peculiar nature of the soil. 
Thus, in Spain for instance, the vintager gathers the grapes 
while the ground beneath is under water ; on the other hand, 
in most parts of the world, it is absolutely necessary to carry 
off the autumn rains by draining. It is about the rising of the 
See c. 43 of this Book. 36 gee c. 45 of this Book. 
27 In B. xvi. cc. 53, 56, 66, 67, and 90. 
