The best remedy for these maladies, so long as grain is in the blade, is the weeding-hook, and, at the moment of sowing, ashes.[329] As to those diseases which develope themselves in the seed and about the root, with due care precautions may be effectually employed against them. It is generally supposed that if seed has been first steeped in wine,[330] it will be less exposed to disease. Virgil[331] recommends that beans should be drenched with nitre and amurca of olives; and he says that if this is done, they will be all the larger. Some persons, again, are of opinion, that they will grow of increased size, if the seed is steeped for three days before it is sown in a solution of urine and water. If the ground, too, is hoed three times, a modius of beans in the pod, they say, will yield not less than a modius of shelled[332] beans. Other seeds, again, it is said, will be exempt from the attacks of maggots, if bruised cypress[333] leaves are mixed with them, or if they are sown just at the moon’s conjunction. Many persons, for the more effectual protection of millet, recommend that a bramble-frog should be carried at night round the field before the hoeing is done, and then buried in an earthen vessel in the middle of it. If this is done, they say, neither sparrows nor worms will attack the crop. The frog, however, must be disinterred before the millet is cut; for if this is neglected, the produce will be bitter. It is pretended, too, that all seeds which have been touched by the shoulders of a mole are remarkably productive.