298Let your vineyards not slope towards the setting sun, do not plant hazel among the vines, and do not seek the topmost shoots or break off cuttings from the top of the tree — so great is their love of the earth — and do not wound the plants with a blunted blade, nor graft in trunks of wild olive: for fire often falls from careless shepherds, which, hidden at first stealthily beneath the rich bark, seizes the wood, and slipping into the high leaves sends a huge roar to the sky; 306then following through the branches it reigns victorious over the high treetops, and wraps the whole grove in flames, and thick with pitchy murk hurls a black cloud to the sky, especially if a storm has swooped down on the woods from above, and a driving wind rolls the blaze along.
312When this happens, they have no strength from the stock, and cannot, when cut, come back and grow green again from the soil below as they were; 314the barren oleaster with its bitter leaves survives.