Respecting the seasons of planting,[1535] opinions were divided, some preferring the close of autumn, immediately after the fall of the leaf, when the sap had forsaken the branches, and descended to the roots; others chose, for the time of this operation, the early spring, just before the sap mounted; while a third class delayed it until the buds began to swell, and the tokens of spring were evident. To these varieties of practice Virgil makes allusion,— When winter frosts constrain the field with cold, The fainty root can take no steady hold; But when the golden spring reveals the year, And the white bird returns whom serpents fear, That season deem the best to plant thy vines; Next that, is when autumnal warmth declines, Ere heat is quite decayed, or cold begun, Or Capricorn admits the winter sun. ----- Footnote 1535: Geop. v. 7, seq. Virg. Georg. ii. 323, sqq. ----- But the above were not the only rules observed; for, besides the general march of the seasons, they took note of the phases of the moon,[1536] whose influence over vegetation all antiquity believed to be very powerful. Some planted during the four days immediately succeeding the birth of the new moon, while others extended their labours through the first two quarters. The act of pruning[1537] was performed when that planet was in its wane. ----- Footnote 1536: Geop. v. 10. Footnote 1537: Geop. iii. 1. ----- There were in Greece[1538] three remarkable varieties of the vine, created by difference in the mode of cultivation.[1539] The first consisted of plants always kept short, and supported on props, as in France; the second of tree-climbers, thence called Anadendrades; the third sort enjoyed neither of these advantages,[1540] but being grown chiefly in steep and stony places, spread their branches over the earth, as is still the fashion in Syra[1541] and other islands of the Archipelago. ----- Footnote 1538: Cf. Theoph. Caus. Plant. iv. 3. 6. Footnote 1539: The low vines of Asia Minor are now pruned in a very particular manner. “As we approached Vourla the little valleys were all green with corn, or filled with naked vine-stocks in orderly arrangement, about a foot and a half high. The people were working, many in a row, turning the earth, or encircling the trunks with tar, to secure the buds from grubs and worms. The shoots which bear the fruit are cut down again in winter.” Chandler, i. 98. Footnote 1540: On the cultivation of the Corinth grape, see Chandler, ii. 339. Footnote 1541: Abbé Della Rocca, Traité Complet des Abeilles, i. 203. Lord Bacon, who had heard of this manner of cultivating the vine, observes, that in this state it was supposed to produce grapes of superior magnitude, and advises to extend the practice to hops, ivy, woodbine, &c. Sylva Sylvarum, 623. -----