ipening; that deer
when they are taken shed salt tears, and boars sweet. But if you have a
mind to such questions, Euthydemus will presently desire you to give an
account of smallage and cummin; one of the which, if trodden down as
it springs, will grow the better, and the other men curse and blaspheme
whilst they sow it.

This last Florus thought to be an idle foolery; but he said, that we
should not forbear to search into the causes of the other things as if
they were incomprehensible. I have found, said I, your design to draw me
on to this discourse, that you yourself may afterward give us a solution
of the other proposed difficulties.

In my opinion it is cold that causes this hardness in corn and pulse,
by contracting and constipating their parts till the substance becomes
close and extremely rigid; while heat is a dissolving and softening
quality. And therefore those that cite this verse against Homer,

The season, not the field, bears fruit,

do not justly reprehend him. For fields that are warm by nature, the
air being likewise temperate, bear more mellow fruit than others. And
therefore those seeds that fall immediately on the earth out of the
sower's hand, and are covered presently, and cherished by being covered,
partake more of the moisture and heat that is in the earth. But those
that strike against the oxen's horns do not enjoy what Hesiod names the
best position, but seem to be scattered rather than sown; and therefore
the cold either destroys them quite, or else, lighting upon them as they
lie naked, condenseth their moisture, and makes them hard and woody.
Thus stones that lie under ground and, plant-animals have softer parts
than those that lie above; and therefore stone-cutters bury the stones
they would work, as if they designed to have them prepared and softened
by the heat; but those that lie above ground are by the cold made hard,
rigid, and very hurtful to the tools. And if corn lies long upon the
floor, the grains become much harder than that which is presently
carried away. And sometimes too a cold wind blowing whilst they winnow
spoils the corn, as it hath happened at Philippi in Macedonia; and the
chaff secures the grains whilst on the floor. For is it any wonder that
as husband-men affirm, one ridge will bear soft and fruitful, and the
very next to it hard and unfruitful corn or--which is stranger--that
in the same bean-cod some beans are of this sort, some of the other, as
more or