nish nourishment for those which
have been reserved. So in a nursery it is the custom to cut it back
at first so that the vine may grow with a stronger stem and may have
greater strength to produce fruitful tendrils: for a stem which grows
slender like a rush is sterile through weakness and cannot throw out
tendrils. Thus it is the custom to call a weak stem a flag, and
a strong stem, which bears grapes, a palm. The name _flagellum_,
indicating something as unstable as a breeze, is derived from
_flatus_, by the change of a letter, just as in the case of the word
_flabellum_, which means fly fan. The name _palma_, which is given
to those vine shoots which are fruitful in grapes, was it seems, at
first, parilema, derived from _parire_ (to produce), whence by a
change of letters, such as we find in many instances, it came to be
called _palma_.

From another part of the vine springs the _capreolus_, which is a
little spiral tendril, like a curled hair, by means of which the vine
holds on while it creeps towards the place of which it would take
possession, from which quality of taking hold of things (_capere_) it
is called _capreolus_.

All forage crops should be saved at this season; first, basil, then
mixed fodder (_farrago_)[87] and vetch, and last of all the hay. Our
name for basil is _ocinum_, which is derived from the Greek word
[Greek: ocheos] and signifies that it comes quickly, like the pot herb
of the same name. It has this name also because it quickens the action
of the bowels of cattle and so is fed to them as a purgative. It is
cut green from a bean field before the pods are formed. On the other
hand that forage which is cut with a sickle from a field in which
barley and vetch and other legumes have been sown in mixture for
forage, is called _farrago_ from the instrument (_ferro_) with which
it is cut, or perhaps because it was first sown in the stubble of a
field of corn (_far_). It is fed to horses and other cattle in the
spring to purge and to fatten them.

Vetch (_vicia_) is so called from its quality of conquering
(_vincire_) because this plant, like the vine, has tendrils by means
of which it creeps twisting upward on the stalks of lupines or other
plants where it clings until it over-tops its host.

If you have irrigated meadows, proceed to water them at this season,
as soon as you have saved the hay.

During droughts water your grafted fruit trees every evening. They
probably derive their name, (_