CHAP. 70.—REMEDIES AGAINST THESE NOXIOUS INFLUENCES.
When you have reason to fear these influences, make bonfires in the fields and vineyards of cuttings or heaps of chaff, or else of the weeds that have been rooted up; the smoke580 will act as a good preservative. The smoke, too, of burning chaff will be an effectual protection against the effects of fogs, when likely to be injurious. Some persons recommend that three crabs should be burnt581 alive among the trees on which the vines are trained, to prevent these from being attacked by coal blight; while others say that the flesh of the silurus582 should be burnt in a slow fire, in such a way that the smoke may be dispersed by the wind throughout the vineyard.
Varro informs us, that if at the setting of the Lyre, which is the beginning of autumn, a painted grape583 is consecrated in the midst of the vineyard, the bad weather will not be productive of such disastrous results as it otherwise would. Archibius584 has stated, in a letter to Antiochus, king of Syria, that if a bramble-frog585 is buried in a new earthen vessel, in the middle of a corn-field, there will be no storms to cause injury.