_Crescente_, which some dictionaries, ignoring its use in a similar connection in Silius Italicus, VII. 674-77, “sublimem calamo sequitur crescente volucrem,” render _jointed_, can only here, I suggest, be properly translated by _lengthening_, or _increasing_. But whether this process of increasing was effected by real joints cannot be clearly ascertained. In his solitary note on _crescente_ Valpy (Delphin edition, 1823) vouchsafes the bald and not informative comment: “Vero mihi videtur intelligenda esse virga quæ crescat in locis palustribus.” The following explanation is interesting, but to my mind indecisive, even though it claims the authority of “the old commentators.”[340] _Crescente_—“L’oiseleur caché sous un arbre rappelait les oiseaux en imitant leur chant: puis, quand les oiseaux étaient sur l’arbre, il allongeait le roseau enduit de glu, qu’il tenait à la main et les oiseaux venaient s’y prendre. Le poëte dit que le roseau _croissait_, parcequ’à mesure que l’oiseleur se hissait sur ses pieds, la baguette engluée semblait croître en effet. Telle est la manière dont les commentateurs anciens interprètent ce distique.” Much again depends on whether we read _vadis_ (shallows) or _levis_ (swift); _vadis_ would incline the balance heavily, but not absolutely, to the rod, not to the reed. We get no help from Friedländer, who contents himself with a mere reference to Martial, _Ep._, XIV. 218, quoted below. Paley is of doubtful or little avail. He holds that _harundo_ means the fowler’s reed. The implement was so contrived that a smaller reed, tipped with birdlime (_viscum_),[341] made from the cherries of the mistletoe, was suddenly protruded (perhaps blown) through a thicker reed against a bird on its perch, and that to this lengthening _crescente_ refers. Cf. _Ep._, XIV. 218. “Non tantum calamis, sed cantu fallitur ales, Callida dum tacita crescit harundo manu.” The fowler attracted the attention of the bird as he approached it, by imitating its note.[342] Propertius refers to fowling (_Vertumnus_, V. 2, 33), and in Petronius (_Sat._, 109, 7) we find “volucres, quas _textis_ harundinibus peritus artifex tetigit.”[343] _Textis_ here, which Mr. Heseltine renders ‘jointed,’ would seem to show Paley’s suggestion, that the first cane was hollow, while the second was “protruded” through it, to be wrong.