Page:Eclogues and Georgics (Mackail 1910).djvu/91

ll. 106–158.] the sun, while the threshing-floor groans dully under the corn-flail, and while the empty chaff flutters to the freshening west wind. This they do, that the fruitful field be not dulled for use and the sluggish furrows choked by overabundant ease, but thirstily swallow the seed and hide it deeper within.

Again the care of the sires begins to drop and of the dams to follow in turn. When the breeding mares wander at the months' fulfilment, let no one allow them to draw heavy wagon-yokes, nor clear the road at a leap and dart over the meadows in violent speed or swim in rushing rivers. On clear lawns they feed them and beside brimming streams, where moss grows and the grass is greenest on the bank, by sheltering caves and jutting shadow of cliffs. About the groves of Silarus and Alburnus evergreen with ilex there swarms a fly whose Roman name is asilus, oestrus the Greeks render it in their speech, fierce, shrill of note, that scatters whole herds distracted through the forest: their bellowings madden the shaken air and the woods and the parched Tanager's bank. With this plague Juno of old wreaked the terrors of her wrath and counselled woe on the heifer-daughter of Inachus: this likewise, for it attacks more fiercely in the burning noons, thou shalt ward off from the breeding flock, and pasture thy herds when the sun is newly risen or the stars usher in the night.

After birth all the care passes to the calves in turn; and immediately they brand the name and