The Natural History of Pliny, Volume 3 (of 6)

Chapter 445: CHAP. 42. (27.)—INCISIONS MADE IN TREES.

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The work assembles systematic observations on animals, insects, and trees, combining natural history with practical notes. It surveys insect forms and habits, including bees, silk‑producing worms, spiders, and parasitic species, and discusses reproduction, classification, diseases, and useful products like honey and silk. It then examines animal anatomy in detail, limb by limb and organ by organ, comparing organs, vital functions, and bodily peculiarities across species. Later sections catalogue trees and exotic plants, describing aromatic gums, spices, frankincense, myrrh, and methods for producing and testing unguents and perfumes, and noting their uses and regions of origin.

CHAP. 42. (27.)—INCISIONS MADE IN TREES.

The proper remedies for charcoal-blight and mildew 3235 will be pointed out in the succeeding Book.3236 In the meantime, however, we may here observe that among the remedies may be placed that by scarification.3237 When the bark becomes meagre and impoverished by disease, it is apt to shrink, and so compress the vital parts of the tree to an excessive degree: upon which, by means of a sharp pruning knife held with both hands, incisions are made perpendicularly down the tree, and a sort of looseness, as it were, imparted to the skin. It is a proof that the method has been adopted with success, when the fissures so made remain open and become filled with wood of the trunk growing between the lips.