The husbandmen of antiquity were often somewhat fanciful in their practices. In order, when forming a nursery,[[1529]] to coax the young plants to grow, the beds to which they were transferred, were formed of a stratum of earth brought from the vineyard whence they also were taken. Another nicety was to take care, that they occupied precisely the same position with respect to the quarters of the heavens[[1530]] as when growing on the parent stock.[[1531]]
“Besides to plant it as it was they mark
The heaven’s four quarters on the tender bark,
And to the north or south restore the side
Which at their birth did heat or cold abide,
So strong is custom; such effects can use
In tender souls of pliant plants produce.”
When desirous of extending the plantation in an old vineyard, instead of the methods above described, they had recourse to another, which was to bend down[[1532]] the vine branch, and bury it up to the point in the earth, where it would take root, and send forth a new vine, and in this way a long series of leafy arcades[[1533]] may sometimes have been formed. At the foot of their vines some cultivators were in the habit of burying three goats’ horns[[1534]] with their points downwards, and the other end appearing above the soil. These they regarded as so many receptacles for receiving and gradually conveying water to the roots, and, consequently, an active cause of the vines’ fertility.
Respecting the seasons of planting,[[1535]] opinions were divided, some preferring the close of autumn, immediately after the fall of the leaf, when the sap had forsaken the branches, and descended to the roots; others chose, for the time of this operation, the early spring, just before the sap mounted; while a third class delayed it until the buds began to swell, and the tokens of spring were evident. To these varieties of practice Virgil makes allusion,—
When winter frosts constrain the field with cold,