CHAP. 45.—THE BEST REMEDIES FOR THE DISEASES OF GRAIN.
The best remedy for these maladies, so long as grain is in
the blade, is the weeding-hook, and, at the moment of sowing,
ashes.
1 As to those diseases which develop themselves in the
seed and about the root, with due care precautions may be effectually employed against them. It is generally supposed that
if seed has been first steeped in wine,
2 it will be less exposed
to disease. Virgil
3 recommends that beans should be drenched
with nitre and amurca of olives; and he says that if this is
done, they will be all the larger. Some persons, again, are of
opinion, that they will grow of increased size, if the seed is
steeped for three days before it is sown in a solution of urine
and water. If the ground, too, is hoed three times, a modius
of beans in the pod, they say, will yield not less than a modius
of shelled
4 beans. Other seeds, again, it is said, will be
exempt from the attacks of maggots, if bruised cypress
5 leaves
are mixed with them, or if they are sown just at the moon's
conjunction. Many persons, for the more effectual protection
of millet, recommend that a bramble-frog should be carried at
night round the field before the hoeing is done, and then buried
in an earthen vessel in the middle of it. If this is done, they
say, neither sparrows nor worms will attack the crop. The
frog, however, must be disinterred before the millet is cut; for
if this is neglected, the produce will be bitter. It is pretended,
too, that all seeds which have been touched by the shoulders
of a mole are remarkably productive.
Democritus recommends that all seeds before they are sown
should be steeped in the juice of the herb known as "aizoüm,"
6
which grows on tiles or shingles, and is known to us by the
Latin name of "sedum" or "digitellum."
7 If blight pre-
vails, or if worms are found adhering to the roots, it is a very
common remedy to sprinkle the plants with pure amurca of
olives without salt, and then to hoe the ground. If, however,
the crop should be beginning to joint, it should be stubbed at
once, for fear lest the weeds should gain the upper hand. I
know for certain
8 that flights of starlings and sparrows, those
pests to millet and panic, are effectually driven away by means
of a certain herb, the name of which is unknown to me, being
buried at the four corners of the field: it is a wonderful thing
to relate, but in such case not a single bird will enter it. Mice
are kept away by the ashes of a weasel or a cat being steeped
in water and then thrown upon the seed, or else by using the
water in which the body of a weasel or a cat has been boiled.
The odour, however, of these animals makes itself perceived
in the bread even; for which reason it is generally thought a
better plan to steep the seed in ox-gall.
9 As for mildew,
that greatest curse of all to corn, if branches of laurel are
fixed in the ground, it will pass away from the field into the
leaves of the laurel. Over-luxuriance in corn is repressed by
the teeth of cattle,
10 but only while it is in the blade; in which
case, if depastured upon ever so often, no injury to it when
in the ear will be the result. If the ear, too, is once cut off,
the grain, it is well known, will assume a larger
11 form, but
will be hollow within and worthless, and if sown, will come
to nothing.
At Babylon, however, they cut the blade twice, and then
let the cattle pasture on it a third time, for otherwise it would
run to nothing but leaf. Even then, however, so fertile is the
soil, that it yields fifty, and, indeed, with care, as much as a
hundred, fold. Nor is the cultivation of it attended with any
difficulty, the only object being to let the ground be under
water as long as possible, in order that the extreme richness
and exuberance of the soil may be modified. The Euphrates,
however, and the Tigris do not deposit a slime, in the same
way that the Niles does in Egypt, nor does the soil produce
vegetation spontaneously; but still, so great is the fertility,
that, although the seed is only trodden in with the foot, a crop
springs up spontaneously the following year. So great a dif-
ferrous in soils as this, reminds me that I ought to take this
opportunity of specifying those which are the best adapted
for the various kinds of grain.