41.The horticultural skill of the Greeks appears, from their writers on geoponics, to have been considerable. It seems that both ringing and grafting were practised by them. and the fertilisation of the fig tree was effected by the well-known practice of caprification. Anatolius and Sotion direct, that when an apple tree is required to bear a larger crop than usual, a ligature should be bound tight round the stem. Democritus says that some fig growers insert (that is, graft) a shoot of the wild fig on every tree of cultivated fig, in order to save the trouble of annual caprification. Of the importance of manure they were well aware, and even of sowing green crops to be buried in the soil for that purpose.
