CHAP. 9. (10.)—THE MODES IN WHICH TREES BEAR.
Having now treated at sufficient length of the requisite conditions of the weather and the soil, we shall proceed to speak
of those trees which are the result of the care and inventive
skill of man. Indeed, the varieties of them are hardly less
numerous than of those which are produced by Nature, [Note] so
abundantly have we testified our gratitude in return for her
numerous bounties. For these trees, we find, are reared either
from seed, or else by transplanting, by layers, by slips torn from
the stock, by cuttings, by grafting, or by cutting into the trunk
of the tree. But as to the story that the leaves of the palm
are planted by the Babylonians, and so give birth [Note] to a tree,
I am really surprised that Trogus should have ever believed
it. Some of the trees are reproduced by several of the methods above enumerated, others, again, by all of them.
