and thrust into a pointed tube of baked clay, which is then planted in the ground and serves to preserve the reeds from water rot; the fourth is what may be called the natural prop, when vines are swung from tree to tree.  Vines should be trained to the height of a man and the interval between the props should be sufficient to give room for a yoke of oxen to plough.  The least expensive kind of a vineyard is that which brings wine to the jug without the aid of any sort of prop.  There are two of this kind, one in which the earth serves as a bed for the grapes, as in many places in Asia, and where usually the foxes share the crop with man;[64] or, if mice appear, it is they who make the vintage, unless you put a mouse trap in every vine, as they do on the island of Pandataria.  The other kind of vineyard, is that where each shoot which promises to bear grapes is lifted from the earth and supported about two feet off the ground by a forked stick:  by this means the grapes, as they form, learn to hang as it were from a branch and do not have to be taught after the vintage; they are held in place with a bit of cord or by that kind of tie which the ancients called a cestus.  As soon as the farmer sees the vintagers turn their backs he carries these props under cover for the winter so that he may use them another year without expense for that account.  In Italy the people of Reate practise this custom.

Thus there are as many methods of cultivating the vine as there are kinds of soil.  For where the land is wet the vine must be trained high because when wine is being made and matured on the vine, it needs sun, not water—­as when it is in the cup!  For this reason it was, I think, that first the vine was made to grow on trees.

Of the different kinds of soil

IX.  It is expedient then, as I was saying, to study each kind of soil to determine for what it is, and for what it is not, suitable.  The word terra is used in three senses:  general, particular and mixed.  It is a general designation when we speak of the orb of the earth, the land of Italy or any other country.  In this designation is included rock and sand and other such things.  In the second place, terra is referred to particularly when it is spoken of without qualification or epithet.  In the third place, which is the mixed sense, when one speaks of terra as soil—­that in which seeds are sown and developed; as for example, clay soil or rocky soil or others.  In this sense there are as many kinds of earth as there are when one speaks of it in the general sense, on account of the mixtures of substances in it in varying quantities which make it of different heart and strength, such as rock, marble, sand, loam, clay, red ochre, dust, chalk, gravel, carbuncle (which is a condition of soil formed by the burning of roots in the intense heat of the sun); from which each kind of soil is called by a particular name, in accordance with the