XXXI.  These are the things to be done during the third season between the rising of the Pleiades and the summer solstice.  Dig the young vines or plough them, and afterwards put the land in good order; that is to say, fine the soil so that no clods shall remain.  This is called fining the soil (occare) because it breaks down (occidare) the clods.  Thin out the vines, but let it be done by one who knows how, for this operation which is considered of great importance is performed only on vines and not on the orchard.  To thin a vine is to select and reserve the one, two and some times even three best new tendrils sprung from the stem of the vine, cutting off all the others, lest the stem may be unable to furnish nourishment for those which have been reserved.  So in a nursery it is the custom to cut it back at first so that the vine may grow with a stronger stem and may have greater strength to produce fruitful tendrils:  for a stem which grows slender like a rush is sterile through weakness and cannot throw out tendrils.  Thus it is the custom to call a weak stem a flag, and a strong stem, which bears grapes, a palm.  The name flagellum, indicating something as unstable as a breeze, is derived from flatus, by the change of a letter, just as in the case of the word flabellum, which means fly fan.  The name palma, which is given to those vine shoots which are fruitful in grapes, was it seems, at first, parilema, derived from parire (to produce), whence by a change of letters, such as we find in many instances, it came to be called palma.

From another part of the vine springs the capreolus, which is a little spiral tendril, like a curled hair, by means of which the vine holds on while it creeps towards the place of which it would take possession, from which quality of taking hold of things (capere) it is called capreolus.

All forage crops should be saved at this season; first, basil, then mixed fodder (farrago)[87] and vetch, and last of all the hay.  Our name for basil is ocinum, which is derived from the Greek word [Greek:  ocheos] and signifies that it comes quickly, like the pot herb of the same name.  It has this name also because it quickens the action of the bowels of cattle and so is fed to them as a purgative.  It is cut green from a bean field before the pods are formed.  On the other hand that forage which is cut with a sickle from a field in which barley and vetch and other legumes have been sown in mixture for forage, is called farrago from the instrument (ferro) with which it is cut, or perhaps because it was first sown in the stubble of a field of corn (far).  It is fed to horses and other cattle in the spring to purge and to fatten them.

Vetch (vicia) is so called from its quality of conquering (vincire) because this plant, like the vine, has tendrils by means of which it creeps twisting upward on the stalks of lupines or other plants where it clings until it over-tops its host.