Soc. Certainly. (11)
(11) There is an obvious lacuna either before or after this remark, or
at both places.
Isch. Supposing, then, you wish the plants to grow as fast as possible: how will the cutting strike and sprout, do you suppose, most readily?—after you have laid a layer of soil already worked beneath it, and it merely has to penetrate soft mould? or when it has to force its way through unbroken soil into the solid ground?
Soc. Clearly it will shoot through soil which has been worked more quickly than through unworked soil.
Isch. Well then, a bed of earth must be laid beneath the plant?
Soc. I quite agree; so let it be.
Isch. And how do you expect your cutting to root best?—if set straight up from end to end, pointing to the sky? (12) or if you set it slantwise under its earthy covering, so as to lie like an inverted gamma? (13)
(12) Lit. "if you set the whole cutting straight up, facing
heavenwards."
(13) i.e. Anglice, "like the letter {G} upon its back" {an inverted
"upper-case" gamma looks like an L}. See Lord Bacon, "Nat. Hist."
Cent. v. 426: "When you would have many new roots of fruit-trees,
take a low tree and bow it and lay all his branches aflat upon the
ground and cast earth upon them; and every twig will take root.
And this is a very profitable experiment for costly trees (for the
boughs will make stock without charge), such as are apricots,
peaches, almonds, cornelians, mulberries, figs, etc. The like is
continually practised with vines, roses, musk roses, etc."
Soc. Like an inverted gamma, to be sure, for so the plant must needs have more eyes under ground. Now it is from these same eyes of theirs, if I may trust my own, (14) that plants put forth their shoots above ground. I imagine, therefore, the eyes still underground will do the same precisely, and with so many buds all springing under earth, the plant itself, I argue, as a whole will sprout and shoot and push its way with speed and vigour.
(14) Lit. "it is from their eyes, I see, that plants..."