Again, what a picture of rich woodland beauty is created out of the occurrence, in the midst of practical directions, of some homely traditional maxims, in accordance with which farmers judged of the probable abundance of their crop:—
Contemplator item, cum se nux plurima silvis
Induet in florem et ramos curvabit olentis:
Si superant fetus, pariter frumenta sequentur,
Magnaque cum magno veniet tritura calore[348].
So too, in a technical account of the different varieties of soil, he brings before the mind, by a single descriptive touch, a picture of abundant harvest-fields,—
non ullo ex aequore cernes
Plura domum tardis decedere plaustra iuvencis[349];
and enables us to feel the charm of a rich pastoral country,—with its lonely woodland glades, its brimming river flowing past mossy and grassy banks, and the shelter and shade of its caves and rocks, in the midst of homely directions for the care of mares before they foal:—
Saltibus in vacuis pascunt et plena secundum